


What the Water Gave Me

by beachpartybb



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Crimelord!Newt, Drug Addiction, M/M, PTSD, Post-Battle of the Breach, Post-Movie(s), Resurrection, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-21 20:26:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beachpartybb/pseuds/beachpartybb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after the Battle of the Breach, Mako struggles to maintain the Hong Kong Shatterdome in readiness to face a threat the world has moved past. Newt sits atop a vast network of both legitimate and criminal enterprises. And Raleigh Becket, Hero of the Breach, face of the new World Crisis Coalition, is coming quietly undone.</p><p>Then the Breach opens again. And Chuck Hansen is pulled from the water. </p><p>The Heroes of the Breach come together again but the nothing is the same: not the world, not the enemy, and not the heroes, themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For a fill on the Pacific Rim kink meme - "Chuck 2.0 - I love all the ending fix-its. But I'm hoping for something decidedly more scifi than he got into the escape pod."
> 
> Title is from the Florence song of the same name, based on the painting by Frida Kahlo (of the same name). What a wonderful confluence of feeling!

Raleigh was in the Drift when the first call came through. He'd pushed three pins behind his left ear and gone down hard. The module he'd gotten from Newt was all sharp sensation, raw, none of the watered-down crap they were allowed to put on the shelves. They'd taken the print off a new mother, right as they put her baby in her arms for the first time. The explosion of joy and love was so strong Raleigh felt his heart seize in his chest. Looking down into the tiny, squished face, the wisps of black hair, knowing that she'd made this thing, that it depended totally on her -- a thread of awe, a subtle shading over everything else -- love on a closed circuit, feeding into this child and billowing out again, a promise --

"Jesus, Raleigh," Newt said, wrenching the prongs of the Pons off his head. "Three pins, man? How fucking deep do you wanna go?" Raleigh found himself suddenly and completely in his own body, sprawled on the couch in his living room, a moment of dissonance at being male again, fading already, like the remnants of a dream.

"How long was I under?" Raleigh asked hoarsely.

"Six hours, man. You're gonna kill yourself," Newt said, switching off the deck. "You've got a real problem, you know. A serious problem."

"So stop selling to me," Raleigh said, sitting up stiffly and brushing tears from his cheeks. Six hours and no soft landing. No wonder he felt like shit. 

Newt snorted, moving to the sink at the small bar and filling a glass. "And let you take your chances scoring on the street? Half that stuff's cut with something, and all their mods are snuff films and gang bangs. Here." 

Raleigh gulped the water down, wiping his mouth and passing the glass back to Newt. He reached behind his ear and pulled the short, thin pins, one after another, dropping them carefully into an ashtray to join a pile of their kin. Newt returned with another glass of water.

"Thanks," Raleigh said, sipping it this time. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" Newt looked around Raleigh's flat -- high ceilings and polished concrete floors, tastefully and expensively decorated (by Mako, Raleigh thought, tucking the thought firmly away) -- and sighed. He looked old, Raleigh thought. Like 5 years of peace had weighed more heavily than a lifetime at war.

"You gotta answer your phone, man. People worry about you." Raleigh set the glass deliberately on the coffee table. The sound it made when it connected with the stone top seemed to echo for too long in the darkened apartment.

"Who worries about me?" he asked quietly.

Newt sighed again, almost a sob, and he sat heavily on the leather love seat. He rested his arms on his knees, face in his hands. Raleigh noticed the red light blinking on the wall display and the ticker read "15 MISSED CALLS", scrolling through numbers. He recognized Newt's three times, a few from the States (had to be Herc, or Tendo), and over and over again, Mako's office.

"IMako?" Raleigh asked, worry stabbing through the last of the drugs in his system. Newt shook his head.

"No. No, it's not..." he sat up abruptly, clasping his hands in front of him like a penitent. He drew in a breath, steeling himself. "It's the Breach, Raleigh. It's back. It's opening again."

Raleigh felt like he was still connected to the Drift deck, like he'd punched the unit without loading a mod. He saw Newt's worried face, large in his vision, then white fell in like snow and he gave himself up to the cold. 

***

"Still no word from him?" 

Mako shook her head before remembering that she'd answered the call voice only. 

"No," she said softly. "But he's very busy."

"Right." Herc Hansen had more gray hair than she remembered, and the lines around his eyes were deeper, somehow sterner. He reminded her, somehow, of her Marshal -- he looked tired, but dependable and solid. And he reminded her a little of his own son, stubborn and determined. She smiled a little. Herc wouldn't appreciate either comparison.

"I called Newt," she said. "He'll find him."

Herc frowned, as if her continued faith in her former co-pilot bothered him somehow. 

"Sooner, rather than later, I hope. We need to know which way the WCC is going to jump. And if Becket's got any sway left we need him to do it in our direction." 

"Do you think they'll re-open the other Shatterdomes?" Mako asked.

"What'll they man them with? You've got three full squads there, and how many trainees?"

"Three pairs who were due for promotion, two with 500 hours under their belts. Twenty cadets who are still learning to Drift."

"Tendo's got two squads running maneuvers in the frozen North. Only one squad in the Alaska Dome, but I've got three old rigs and nearly fifteen of those carbon resin monstrosities."

Mako shook her head again. "All of ours are the new. They're too light," she said, displeased. "It feels like you're naked when you pilot. I can't imagine meeting a kaiju in one."

"Strong, though," Herc said. "We're old-timers, Mako. These kids take to 'em like ducks to water."

"Thirty-five trained or nearly trained teams," she said, doing calculations in her head. "And half the pilots children."

"It's more than we had last time," he said quietly.

The wall screen chimed softly at her.

"It's Raleigh," she said. She gestured and another screen sprang open below Herc. Another wave of her hand and a thin line joined the two screens, pulsing gently.

"Hello, Raleigh," Mako said, softly. "Marshal Hansen is on the line with us."

Raleigh looked terrible, eyes red and tired, like he'd been crying, hair and beard grown long. He bore no resemblance to the hero of the Breach, to the face of the World Crisis Coalition, to the darling of the gossip rags.

"Becket, you look like shit," Herc said shortly. Raleigh grinned crookedly.

"It's good to see you, sir. I wish it were under better circumstances. You want to know what the WCC is doing." It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Herc said. "Are they leaning toward action or committee?"

"They're still looking for the proper form to fill out," Raleigh said, disgusted. "There's a box to tick for every crisis but "return of the kaiju" didn't make the cut, somehow. How are we on manpower?"

"Thirty-three jaeger ready to be deployed, a slew of trainees, eighteen empty suits," Herc said. "It's all we have to show for five years of lurking in the shadows of a world that barely tolerates us."

"Thirty-three?" Raleigh exclaimed. "More than enough for whatever comes out, right?"

"Hermann says not," Mako put in. "We can't close the Breach until one of them comes through for us to use as a Trojan. And Hermann said that whatever comes out, it won't be something we've seen before. He and Newt have been dreaming of terrible things."

"All right," said Herc. "Let's not get into the metaphysical. Whatever crawls out of that gash, we'll shred it. Then we'll stuff it back inside and collapse the Breach." _Again_ hung unspoken in the air. 

"The WCC has an emergency meeting scheduled for 2100, our time. I'll make the case for an immediate suspension of territorial waters and airspace--"

"God, listen to yourself, man," Herc said. "Who gives a damn about airspace? I wouldn't have believed it, Becket--"

"Believed what. Sir." Raleigh's jaw was clenched and Mako knew his fists would be, too. Herc looked like he'd tasted something sour.

"Gentlemen," she interrupted. "We don't have time. Dr. Gottlieb gives us 72 hours before the Breach is wide enough for the kaiju to emerge. We must not work at cross purposes."

The call was finished quickly thereafter and Mako sat back in her chair. She rested her hands on her rounded belly, spreading her fingers on either side. She allowed herself one stifled sob, for herself, for her child, for all the children under her care -- some of whom would surely die when the Breach opened -- and for Raleigh, who she had failed and who had failed himself.

There was a sharp knock at the door to her office.

"Come," she said, no trace of emotion in her voice. The door banged open, rebounding off the wall.

"General Mori!" Two young women stood in the doorway, gasping for breath. 

"Cadets! What is the meaning of this?" The girls looked at each other, blue eyes wide above upturned noses. New recruits, sisters, she recalled, from Kansas, 11 months apart. Excellent Drift compatibility. 

"Pardon, General. There's a..." she glanced at her sister.

"A man," the sister said. "He came out of the water." They were staring at her with some kind of expectation. There was something she didn't yet understand.

"What?" she asked. "A man?"

The girls shared another look. One of them nodded, turned back to Mako.

"General. It's Chuck Hansen."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited 3/13/15 for characterization and tighter structure throughout.

Newton Geiszler was a genius. He understood how things worked, how they fit together and moved each other -- living or inorganic. Even numbers and their applications were clear to him, much to Hermann's consternation. But for all this intuitive comprehension of systems, he was remarkably poor at understanding human interactions.

Enter Hannibal Chau, who could predict the behavior of a pedestrian off the street by the pattern on his jeans or the way he tied his shoes. He knew what people wanted and, more importantly, how much they would pay for it. So when Newt mentioned in passing one day that he'd used his modified Drift gear to actually record a memory to revisit later, Hannibal smelled a profit.

After they'd closed the Breach, Newt was sure his future was set. He and Hermann would do a circuit of lectures, write a few books, maybe a TED talk, and then settle down together in a tenured spot in one of the big university complexes that had fled inland -- Europe, he'd thought, or maybe something in central Asia. But after the first round of publicity for the heroes of the Battle of the Breach -- most of which focused on Raleigh and Mako, or even Pentecost and Chuck, who were dead for God's sake-- he'd had a rude awakening.

No one wanted to hear about kaiju. The world was ready to leave the past behind. And so was Hermann. With a wife and a new baby, he was content to live out his life as the dusty professor Newt had once believed him to be. Raleigh and Mako were the world's darling couple, heroes and lovers, leaders in the new world order. The kaiju and the war were reduced to memorial statues and national holidays. And once a year, on the anniversary of the Breach collapse, there was a flurry of media coverage, solemn remembrance of the dead, stock footage of old attacks and Jaeger battles, interviews with Raleigh or Mako, maybe a visit to the Hong Kong Shatterdome to see the new recruits. Weren't they _precious_ , these children, playing with their robots, helping with the clean-up and reconstruction, tolerated with a certain condescending fondness.

So, no lectures, no book, no tenure, and his tattoos were even more taboo than they had been before. Hermann called him sometimes, offered him a position in the biology department at his university twice, and sent him a card at Christmas with a family portrait on the front. Newt kept the cards in a shoe box in his closet, declined the job offers, and eventually started avoiding Hermann's calls. Newt took up a place at the Hong Kong Shatterdome, which, under Mako's leadership, was soon a tightly run peacetime installation. He spent his days tinkering with pieces of decommissioned Jaeger tech and running tests on his dwindling supply of kaiju samples. He found Hannibal, miraculously unscathed from his encounter with the kaiju digestive tract, and resumed their business relationship.

With everyone else he'd ever known dead or moving on, Newt found Hannibal comforting, strangely, and Hannibal found him -- something. Enough something to call him up for dim sum sometimes, or to drop by Newt's efficiency flat in Hung Hom to talk about the rebuilding efforts, or the new World Crisis Coalition, or how the city was going to hell, now that people were moving back. Newt realized after a while that they were friends.

When Hannibal realized that Newt had stumbled onto a new form of entertainment he brought his considerable connections to bear on the enterprise. Goods traded hands in shadowy rooms and the order came down through the PPDC that Drift tech was being declassified and licensed to a limited number of developers for medical, scientific, and entertainment purposes. All of the licenses were to shell companies owned by Hannibal and his new silent partner and director of research development, Newt.

Two years from the Breach and there were Drift sets for sale on the shelves of every big box store, Drift arcades in every city and town, and Drift addicts snuffling the streets for black market mods that appealed to their more exotic tastes. There were thousands of legal modules available, mostly narratives, day-in-the-life imprints of all kinds of people. Ever wanted to be a policeman? A surgeon? A woman? A man? And there were nearly as many illegal mods, for those who wanted to kill, or be killed.

The drugs were a happy accident, a compound Newt mixed up to deepen the Drift experience for himself when he was chasing an old memory. Hannibal had it out of his hands the instant Newt came out of the Drift, and it was on the streets in a month, in micro-carbon tubes that could be inserted straight into the nerve for an instant and irresistible high. And with the Drift... it was like watching a movie with sound and color after a life time of black and white, silent film. And just like that, Newt was both a legitimate and wildly successful businessman and an underworld drug kingpin. He found he placed little importance on either facet of himself.

Raleigh had discovered pins on his own, and after a series of near misses, Newt made sure he only got lab grade stuff, partially out of residual fondness for the pilot but mostly because the image of Mako's face if she ever came home to find Raleigh dead on the floor was more than he could bear. Mako was one of the few people in the world that Newt really loved. Because she was good, and it didn't matter where she stood or who stood with her; she could be knee deep in murderers and shit and she wouldn't waver. There was something about constancy that was so attractive to Newt. It was part of what drew him to Hannibal, too.

Two days after Mako had called Newt, desperate to find Raleigh, two days after she'd told him the Breach was back, Newt was doing his damnedest to avoid thinking about any of it. He was Drifting with one of his editors, Leese, a junkie who'd turned out to have a gift with manipulating memory and sensation that raised modding to high art. They were running through her latest, "a meditation on the futility of trying to achieve anything" as she called it, a blend of regret, disappointment and unfulfilled potential that had come from some of the whores at one of Hannibal's other establishments.

"Well," Newt said. "If you're trying to get people to kill themselves, this oughta do it."

"Wait for it," she said, a hint of anticipation in her voice. The despondency of the mod seemed to fill the Drift, spreading like treacle across Newt's brain. No clear images or memory, just a hazy landscape waiting for his own baggage to populate it. Long practice kept him from following any of his own thoughts deeper; he knew without a doubt that each and every one would pull him head first into the Breach. Then he heard Leese's fingers on the control board. Something flared across Newt's brain, blazing through the misery and despair. Bright and hot -- it was hope, he realized, whiting out and consuming everything else. It was transcendent.

"Well?" Leese demanded, closing out the mod. Newt blinked back into himself.

"You get that last bit off one of Hannibal's girls?" he asked.

"Yeah, right," Leese said, snorting. "I paid this lady at the laundry to let me record her little daughter on her birthday. She wanted a bike. So, what do you think?"

"I think it's the best one yet, you're a virtuoso, seriously," Newt said. "Has anyone tried it on pins?"

"Oh, yeah," she said, smiling predatorily. "Had a few people over last night. One guy cried himself out of the Drift, two dudes came in their pants at the key change -- like, literally, they came -- and one lady did both. Cathartic, I guess."

Someone tapped on the door, pushed it open. The editing intern stuck her head nervously into the room.

"Excuse me, Dr. Geiszler, there are some people here to see you..." she trailed off, glancing over her shoulder into the hall.”Soldiers," she mouthed, widening her eyes.

"It's all right, intern," Newt said, pulling the Pons off and rubbing his temples. "Finalize the cuts and export this, Leese. Get it out as soon as you can." .

"Everything all right, boss?" she asked.

"Of course!" Newt replied, standing and moving through the door held open by the intern. He popped his head back into the editing room. "But just in case, if you don't hear from me by tonight, call Hannibal." He flashed her a crazed grin and pulled the door closed behind him. 

Two Lieutenants of the Pan Pacific Defense Corp stood to attention when they saw him. A woman and a man, strong resemblance, most likely siblings, he thought. Had to be pretty new because he didn't recognize them.

"Dr. Geiszler," the woman said. "General Mori would like to speak with you."

"Again?" Newt said. "She could have called."

"No, sir. Please, come with us." She gestured for him to precede the pair of them down the hall. The last thing he wanted to do was go back to the Shatterdome, to be reminded that everything he'd built in five years was still only his second choice. _He was done with the Breach_ , a voice whispered in his head. _The world didn't want him then and he didn't give a damn about the world now._ The voice sounded like Hannibal's.

He thought about Mako's voice, the sudden call that morning, polite and distant after so many years of silence, asking him if he knew where Raleigh was, so careful to imply nothing, could he please put them in touch, painfully empty of judgment, and underneath it all, desperation, terror, need. If she could call him to tell him the Breach was opening, he couldn't imagine what warranted an in person interview.

"Ok," he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Right. Let's go."

* * *

 

"Oh my God," Newt said. His hands were pressed against the glass of the viewing window. "Where did you find him?"

"He came out of the ocean at the loading dock. Two of our trainees found him." Mako's hands were folded neatly across her belly. Newt turned toward her.

"Does Herc know?" He adjusted his glasses, running his hands through his hair and frowning at her. "Jesus, when are you due, you're huge."

Mako laughed. "Newt. I have missed you." She shook her head, smile fading. "No. I haven't told Marshal Hansen. Only the girls who found him and the medic know he is here."

"Good thinking," Newt muttered, turning back to watch a medic taking Chuck's blood pressure. She looked at the meter and scribbled something on her chart. "Don't want to get anyone's hopes up."

"I agree," Mako said. "The timing is too perfect. The Breach opens and Chuck reappears? I don't like it. So, I want you to run some tests. Your old lab is exactly as you left it. Anything else you need, I will provide for you."

Newt watched as the much-subdued Chuck sat meekly for the medic as she poked and prodded him. Chuck opened his mouth and the woman dabbed a swab inside, dropping it neatly in a tube and labeling the sample.

"He's taking it well," Newt said. "Resurrection, I mean."

"We gave him a mild sedative when we brought him in. Medic Duarte will be reassigned as your lab assistant and the Cadets Dawson will provide any other assistance you may require. I hope you can understand my desire for discretion."

Newt couldn't look away from the man sitting on the edge of the examination table, his legs dangling over the side, hands relaxed in his lap. Blonde hair at stubborn angles, dimples flashing at something the medic said, eyes crinkling in the first smile Newt had seen.

"He hasn't aged a day," Newt said, incredulous. "Like, literally, not a day. Have you spoken to him?"

"Find out who he is, Dr. Geiszler," Mako said, her voice like flint. Newt looked at her. Her face was like iron.

"Or what he is."

* * *

 

The DNA tests came back a match but Newt was not reassured. They'd moved Chuck to what had been a large supply closet off Newt's old lab. Newt had gone to wait in the lab, directing the Dawson girls as they cleared out the room and set up a cot, camp table and a chemical toilet. He was moving randomly around the lab, muttering to himself, flitting from one thing to another. He felt like a live wire, humming with current, nowhere to put it, just buzzing, growing inside him.

When Chuck stepped into the lab, Newt had to grip the table to steady himself. Chuck saw him and recognition lit his eyes.

"Newt! They won't tell me. Anything. But we did it?" His words were thick and a little slow. "It worked?"

"Yeah, yeah. It worked," Newt said absently. Chuck was wearing standard issue gray sweats and white sneakers, sleeves rolled up his forearms, and there was the burn on the inside of his left wrist where Chuck had caught himself with a soldering iron in this very lab.

"What do you remember?" Newt asked. "About what happened? What's the last thing you can remember?"

Chuck cut his eyes to the cadets hovering in the door.

"Uh, thanks, guys. Uh, Cadets," Newt said. "Close that door behind you. Thanks." When the door was sealed, Chuck hefted himself clumsily up onto a stainless steel lab table.

"Marshal's dead," he said. "I know that. We blew the payload and I felt him go, in the Drift. And. Me, too, I thought." Newt stared at him, unable to think of words or even the concepts that words might convey.

"Bomb went off, and... we were together, in the Drift. Then nothing. Until those girls pulled me out of the water." Chuck looked down, lacing his hands together in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture.

"Newt. I don't think... I'm not supposed to be--" It was almost a whisper, gravel rough in Chuck's throat.

"Chuck. Buddy. Listen. It's, uh, well, it's been five years since we closed the Breach." Newt pushed his glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose and peered at Chuck. 

Chuck raised his head, watching Newt out of the corner of his eye like a frightened animal. He held very still.

"Five-- five _years_."

"Yeah, man." Newt pushed his fingers through his hair again, knew it was standing at all angles. He blew out a breath and gestured helplessly. "We thought you were dead, man."

Chuck's eyes had gone unfocused and he began sucking air in and out, too quickly. "Jesus. Jesus," he gasped.

"Chuck? Okay, man, don't freak out, here --"

"I can't breathe," Chuck said. "I can't feel my face." Newt grabbed for his wrist, felt his pulse, pulled one of his eyes open wide and checked his pupil.

"You're having a panic attack, man. Just try to calm down. Breathe, okay?"

"Thought I was dead, thought I was dead." Chuck laughed, like glass breaking or ice snapping in a river. His chest heaved as his lungs worked overtime to bring in air. "I was," he said. "I _was_. I was. I was." 

Newt scrabbled on the table for the pile of syringes. He grabbed a blue one, ripped the paper back and pressed the flat tip to Chuck's left wrist, just above the burn scar. He depressed the trigger and the sedative was pushed down through Chuck's arm into his blood stream. Chuck shuddered and gasped a moment longer. "I was," he murmured as he slumped forward onto Newt, "I am." His dead weight carried them both to the floor.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first kaiju attack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited 3/13/15 for structure and some added story elements.
> 
>  
> 
> So I realized I really needed to research Hong Kong a little better and figure out where the Shatterdome is in relation to everything else. I'm trying to situate everything in a geographically realistic way, but it may be a bit shaky. Sorry to anyone who's familiar with Hong Kong!
> 
> Also, I'm totally making up the rank structure here, basing it on the use of Marshal and Chief Officer and working backwards, sideways and up.
> 
> I apologize for the short chapter and also in advance for how I won't be updating for the next few days. Parents are coming into town! I may post some snippets on my [tumblr](http://beachpartybb.tumblr.com/) if I can sneak any writing in. We're basically getting set up for the main action of the story, sorry it's taken a bit of meandering to get there!

The kaiju came that night. Newt struggled out of grasping dreams where he was dissolving, the pulse-buzz of the kaiju-hive mind thick at the base of his skull. Someone was screaming. Newt came awake, awareness returning suddenly. He'd fallen asleep on his old lab cot, tucked into a corner near Hermann's ludicrously over-sized blackboard. He'd half-carried, mostly dragged, Chuck into his makeshift room, heaving the pilot onto his cot and pulling a sheet over him.

It was Chuck screaming, of course, Newt realized, and scrambled up, rushing to check on him. He struggled with the door for a few seconds before he realized -- it was locked. He'd done it himself, feeling guilty but not willing to risk it. By the time he got the door open, Chuck was awake, curled around his pillow, away from the door.

"They're coming," he said hoarsely. "Tell them."

A klaxon began to sound, shrill and familiar.

"I think they know," Newt said.

 

* * *

 

It was a struggle for Mako to make the climb to LOCCENT. Her feet had swollen hugely over the past month and she doubted she would make even the short walk from her rooms to central control before the Jaegers were launched. She'd had realtime displays set up in her living quarters, taking over the walls and furniture with consoles and screens.

She was already awake when the alarm sounded, insomnia shaping up to be her constant companion for the last trimester.

 

"General," the disembodied voice of Cirocco Miranda, chief LOCCENT officer, echoed through her room. "We have kaiju signature."

"How many?" Mako asked. "Bring up LOCCENT, center screen." A tired looking woman appeared on the screen. Her always unruly hair was escaping an attempt at a regulation bun, blonde wisps of curl haloing her head.

"We can't tell," Miranda said. "The reading is like a, an energy field."

"Deploy attack formation delta-delta-charlie. Get the reserve suited up, too."

"Yes, ma'am." Someone in the control room shouted for the chief and she dipped out of the camera's angle of view. Mako's fingers flew over a console, calling up charts and maps and pilot assignments, information flowing over her wall displays in a wash of light.

"Pilots are in the Drivesuit room, countdown initiated." A timer blinked into life at the top of the wall, counting backward from seven.

"Time to beat the clock, ladies and gentlemen, let's get those pilots into their Conn-pods!"

Mako watched as rows of pilot teams came online, Drift readings spilling across the screens. One by one, her pilots checked in, each and every one preparing for his or her first encounter with the enemy that had almost destroyed the human race. .

"They're away, General Mori," Miranda said. "ETA to kaiju interception is 3 minutes."

"Thank you, Chief." The child within her kicked and she placed her hands on either side of her swollen belly, an empty gesture of comfort for a child she could neither see nor touch. She watched the blinking dots representing her Jaegers as they moved across the ocean toward the advancing wave of the enemy.

Helplessness welled up in her chest. She stamped it down and watched the gap between the dots and line shrink.

 

* * *

 

Raleigh was high but he couldn't bring himself to Drift. He sat on the roof of his building with a glass of whiskey and stared out at the distant lights of the Shatterdome. Jaeger after Jaeger spilled from its launch bays and his heart surged in his chest, something bittersweet, like pride and nostalgia and also sorrow. He'd heard none of the pilots was above 22. There was some compulsion inside him that throbbed like an exposed nerve and he poked at it, unceasingly. He felt that he held himself in place through a force of will and that if he relaxed, he would find himself back inside Gipsy Danger, striding out to face his old enemy.

His enemies now were the righteous old fucks who had survived the last Kaiju War far inland, giving out medals with the same hands that pulled the funding for the Jaeger program in the first place. Now they squabbled over what kind of civilian oversight should be attached to the PPDC, in order to keep the military agency from any extra-governmental activity. All of the first emergency session and half of yesterday's had been about assigning blame -- hadn't the PPDC closed the Breach? Had the world been misled? Who had misled them? Whose responsibility was it? -- and on and on until Raleigh excused himself to the restroom and pushed two pins behind his ear to keep from screaming or punching something. He hadn't bothered to come down since.

He knocked the glass back and sucked on a piece of ice while he poured himself another two fingers of whiskey. The cold against his teeth and the smooth surface against his tongue grounded him and he focused on the sensation and forced himself to breathe. Images of the Others' strange, dead world slid under the skin of reality and he made himself remember the escape pod, shooting back through the Breach, waking up in Mako's arms. He'd come back from that place. _They came back, too_ , he thought as the last of the ice dissolved.

He wondered how Mako was handling it. He imagined her, lit by the displays in LOCCENT, skin glowing blue, red, green, as information shifted and played around her. It felt okay, thinking about her, the pit of loss shallower, the edges smoothed, the darkness less biting. He wondered how she'd changed in three years. He'd seen her a few times on the news, or on the other side of a chamber at the WCC, but it wasn't the same. That wasn't Mako. That was General Mori.

The last time he'd seen Mako was the day before her wedding. She'd tracked him down to a flop house in Wan Chai. He'd thought he was hallucinating, or Drifting, when he saw her. He'd taken some pretty bad shit and the colors were all kind of whirling and shifting, and the room was smoky, anyway, but there she was, suddenly. Beautiful and clean, all perfect pen strokes and deep hues, like a drawing.

She'd only looked at him, and God knows what she saw -- a junkie, pinned out of his mind, sprawled on a dirty mattress, waiting his turn to Drift, filthy hair, bloodshot eyes, the works -- but she'd only looked, he didn't know how long. Her face had been like water, shivering and tumbling in the light, then settling, stilling, until her features were clear again. Then she was gone. And after that, Newt had come for him and taken him away and Mako had never spoken to him again.

He stood on the roof, thinking about how badly he'd fucked up, about Mako, fighting the kaiju by herself because he wasn't strong enough to help her, about how the most important thing he'd ever done was being undone while he sat here, lost in a haze of alcohol and drugs and futility. He saw the lights returning back across Victoria Bay. Ten Jaegers had gone out into the ocean. Six returned out of the black. For a long time, nothing moved against the sky. Then the carriers came back, hauling one, two, three Jaegers back to the Shatterdome.

He stayed on the roof until the sky began to lighten, keeping vigil for the last Jaeger, until he saw the salvage ships leaving the harbor. He went inside.

In the living room, he pulled the spent pin from behind his ear, dropping it carelessly on the coffee table beside his empty glass and the half full bottle of whiskey. The news flashed and flickered on the wall, muted but still all too clear. Two squads, more than enough for any threat they’d previously met. But this—a seething, kaiju-blue sea of comparatively tiny monsters, swarming over the first squad like locusts – this was nothing they’d seen before. An aerial video -- too damn close to the action, these journalists were so fucking stupid, no long term memory – showed a bright blue Jaeger covered in kaiju, thrashing, giant hands brushing and grasping at the creatures, more moving into the spaces left behind. He could see when the pilots started to panic, twisting and jerking, pieces of opaque polycarbonate flaking off beneath the gnashing teeth of the kaiju. The beasts moved over the Conn-pod. And suddenly, with a shudder, the Jaeger was still. And then the tower of kaiju collapsed in on itself and the Jaeger was gone.

The second squad had moved in by then, two of them with what looked like flamethrowers, searing the insect-like creatures from their fellow Jaegers. The other squad members were using standard hand cannons to take out whole swathes of the creatures in the water. The footage cut to a reporter in a studio, then Herc Hansen, looking stern and capable. Raleigh shut off the screen and slumped onto the couch.

“Jesus,” he said. “Jesus. They’re just kids. Just fucking kids.” He fumbled for the whiskey on the table, splashing alcohol into his glass. He knocked it back in one go. Suddenly his face crumpled and he let out a strangled sob. He threw the glass, smashing it against the vid screen. It shattered, cracking the screen and leaving a trail of wet down the wall. An insistent chime announced a call.

“Yeah,” he said, face in his hands, voice thick. “Becket.”

“Raleigh,” Mako said, and he was back in that smoky room on the shitty mattress, watching his life seep out of him. “I need you.”

He answered before he even really heard her.

“I’m on my way.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mako and Newt enlist Raleigh to help with Chuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited 3/13/15 for characterization, structure, and added story elements.
> 
>  
> 
> Sorry for the delay! There was a tense moment where I almost rewrote the entirety of chapter 3 but I talked myself off the ledge. Now, Chuck!

The world was white heat and pressure, like a tack pushing through cellophane.

Then, for a long time, the world was not.

A tangle of black-on-black and red pulse, the space behind eyes expanded to encompass the universe and everything tied down and covered over with dark pain like whips of lightning. Knives in place of bone, acid for blood, razor-wire muscle and wood-pulp skin, crushed in a giant's fist and built again and again--

The sea gave him up onto a rocky shore and bare white arms pulled him from the waves. He lay on his back, staring up at the night sky that was never quite dark, at the hulk of the Shatterdome, then at pale faces ringed with dark hair that seemed to fade into the sky, dark brows drawn together in identical expressions of thought. He let his head loll to the side and watched the water lapping at his fingers where they were sprawled in the surf. All sound was bound up in the crash of the waves, the rustle of water slipping around the foundations of the Shatterdome.

He was tired but he didn't dare close his eyes because there were things behind his eyelids that he almost remembered, a red darkness alive with pain, so he felt the gravelly beach digging into his back, the wetness of the waves on his fingers, listened to the sigh of the ocean and looked out to find the place where the water met the sky.

He was wrapped in a tarp, pressed in among crates on a wharf. The girls had gone, throwing worried looks over their shoulders as they jogged away. He heard a forklift moving somewhere far away. His cheek was pressed against the scored plastic of a crate. It was warm, still, from the sun, and the solidity was a pleasant contrast to his own ephemerality. He did not sleep.

Later the girls were back, with another woman in a medic's uniform, and she pressed a spray to his neck and he felt something uncoil inside him, and they took him by back ways, unseen, through the Shatterdome. The hallways they passed through were empty and silent. Even for the graveyard shift, the Shatterdome seemed abandoned.

"I want to see my father," he said, and his voice startled him, because it was his and he recognized it. One of the girls stopped, staring at him open mouthed. The other one elbowed her, smiling stiffly at Chuck.

"Marshal Hansen is--" she began, but the medic cut her off.

"Let's get you clean, Ranger, and debriefed. You gave us all quite a scare." The two girls looked at each other, some silent communication passing between them. The medic smiled at him, making determined eye contact.

They brought him to an observation room. The girls went out and the woman helped him shower and put on paper clothes. He sat on an examination table and she talked to him, and he replied, but neither said anything and each exchange faded from his mind like sparks against the night. There was a mirror against one wall and he knew someone was watching him on the other side but he didn't know who it would be and the woman wouldn't tell him. He asked about Gipsy Danger and her pilots, about the mission, again and again, about the mission, and she put a thermometer in his mouth, glancing at the mirror. There was something like fear and something like pity in her eyes. He didn't ask any more questions.

His eyes hurt from fluorescent lights and he was cold. He flexed his toes to ward off the chill. The woman left with a chart and returned with regulation sweats and sneakers. When he was dressed, she gave him a protein packet and a bottle of water. He was suddenly starving and he finished both too quickly. Then she gestured him out of the room and they were winding down to the research levels.

"Where are we going?" he asked, his mind clearer, the clothes and food lending a sort of narrative to what had been a disjointed series of impressions. When she didn't answer, he felt the first frisson of alarm. He clamped down on it, hard, reaching for the assurance and heat with which he'd always faced the world. It was like feeling for a familiar lamp in the dark and finding it gone. He felt the dark pressing against the backs of his eyes, the dangerous place rising up, and he grit his teeth against it, counting his footsteps and letting the slap of rubber on concrete root him in the present.

Then the medic stopped and opened a door and he saw Newt, tight jeans, wrinkled t-shirt, thick-rimmed glasses, and he breathed out in relief. The dark receded. His head felt light. Newt stared at him, taking him in like a new kaiju, cataloging and evaluating. The two girls were there, dressed in cadet uniforms, trying to be unobtrusive, observing avidly.

"What do you remember?" Newt asked him. "What's the last thing you can remember?"

The dark came bubbling up, seeping through the cracks in his control like oil, slick and viscous, and he glanced at the girls, couldn't have it overwhelm him in front of these strangers. Newt sent them away and they were alone. The red heat was behind his eyes. Something was there, had been waiting, and if he let the words come it would get out, into the room with them. And if he didn't let the words come, it would consume him from within.

He thought he was speaking but really he was watching Newt through the pulsing coming up from the base of his skull. And he knew before Newt told him. Five years. Dead. It was here, the thing, bursting out of him. He tried to hold it, put his whole being into keeping it there, just inside his skin, but it wasn't enough. He was dying.

Distantly, he heard Newt speaking to him, heard his own voice reply. And inside, the white heat, the pressure, the pulse, the bone knives, the burning blood, crushing, razor bursting through his skin, larva in a wasp's nest, he'd knocked it down with a stick from the pergola in the back garden, and the wasps crawling out, poisoned, weak against the grass, his booted foot breaking it open and spilling larvae, half-formed, horrible, upon the ground and he stamped them out, every one, screaming, until his father found him, and his mother was dead, like the wasps, and he felt his throat close up because he wanted to be held but he wasn't a baby, and one of the wasps had survived, crawled in the wrist of his shirt and stung him--

Then a weight came down, slow and implacable, and everything fell before it and even the red-dark was pushed away and true black swallowed him up.

In his dream, he was a child and a man and baby, all at once. He walked along a street beside a stone wall and the sun shone down through leaves and dappled the ground before him. He thought he was back in Sydney, but the longer he walked, the less he knew the landscape. Now someone walked beside him, was it mother, and he turned his head to look, but there were a thousand thousand lines running from the back of him and he couldn't, turned the other way, to look at the lines, lines of light running back and back and back, into the red darkness behind him, not there, no, that was the place he mustn't look, now mother, was it mother, leading him down the street by the stone wall, her hand on his arm was strange, black and shiny and hard and jointed all wrong, but she whispered _come along come along_ and--

He woke up screaming and he knew the mission had failed because the red darkness was back and out of it, down along the thousand thousand lines of light came the kaiju. His body ached and his eyes burned, and he heard Newt open the door to his room.

"They're coming," and he knew that Newt understood him, because Newt had been there in the red-dark, he knew, even though he couldn't see. "Tell them."

They sat in the dark of his room, not speaking, listening to the announcements, as the pilots were mobilized and the Jaegers launched. And when the Jaegers engaged, he knew, because they came into the red-dark suddenly, blazing with white light. And before them the oozing tide of kaiju fell away and the dark was burned up. He wanted to warn them, the brilliant lights, warn them that the pulsing darkness was endless, could not be drawn like poison, but it was too late, too late, because the lights were dimming and one of them was covered over and went out.

"I can see them," he was saying. "Can you see them?" And Newt murmuring, "no, no." It was inside him. They were inside him.

He heard someone screaming. It sounded like "kill me" or "help me" and he bit down hard on his tongue because it was his voice again. Blood filled his mouth, metal tang and salt. Then someone forced fingers in his mouth and he felt a burst of cool air on his arm and the weight fell again, and he thought of the wasps and mother's strange hand and his father's face, turning away from him.

* * *

 

Mako sent a helicopter to Raleigh's apartment and he was at the Shatterdome a bare hour after she'd sent for him. Newt met him as he climbed down onto the landing pad and pulled him toward the elevators.

"Raleigh," he said. "Jesus, man, I'm glad you're here." Newt looked like hell, eyes bloodshot, face grey with fatigue, his clothes crumpled as if he'd slept in them.

"Why are you here?" Raleigh asked, more than a little surprised to see Newt on base.

"I don't even know where to start. Chuck--"

The door to the elevator opened and Newt broke off. A tall, raw-boned woman nodded at them, putting out a hand to hold back the elevator door and gesturing for them to join her inside. Raleigh glanced at Newt, who swallowed, nodded at the woman and stepped in. Raleigh followed. She let the doors slide shut and pushed the button for the administrative level. The controls buzzed at her and she swiped a card. The elevator lurched upward.

"I'm Cirocco Miranda," she said, turning toward Raleigh and holding out her hand. Her grip, when he took it, was firm and strong. She was sort of ruggedly fair-skinned; white blonde hair and pale eyes, combined with her height, speaking of a Nordic heritage.

"Raleigh Becket," he said. "You're Mako's Chief LOCCENT officer."

"I am," she said. She had a clipped way of speaking that Raleigh associated somehow with the snow and the dark. "General Mori will see you in her office."

She slid her eyes to Newt, who was chewing his lip and running his hand through his hair, muttering to himself. She looked back at Raleigh and he felt suddenly as if he were back in the fifth grade, waiting for the principal to mete out punishment for his latest transgression. He resisted the urge to look down and see if he'd put on mismatched shoes or if his fly was undone. The ride stretched on in an uncomfortable silence until they were discharged on Admin and the woman led them down the hall to Mako's door.

She rapped twice on the door and opened it, stepping into the doorway.

"Mr. Becket and Dr. Geiszler, General."

"Thank you, Chief. Please show them in and see that we are not disturbed."

"Yes, ma'am." She saluted and then stepped back into the hall. "Gentlemen."

Raleigh found the room little changed from the last time he'd been there. It reminded him of his own home; both had been decorated with Mako's usual blend of rich texture and simple design. She'd kept Pentecost's sleek wooden desk and the smooth surface was bare except for a communications console and a long-stemmed flower in a simple glass vase. He realized he was looking everywhere but at the woman seated behind the desk.

Newt came in behind him and closed the door. Mako rose.

"Thank you for coming, Raleigh." He looked at her then and his voice died in his throat. Her hair was unbound, falling around her shoulders in a dark sheet. Her eyes were coals above her high cheekbones; she was exhausted and trying to hide it. She wore a blue robe over a loose cream dress and at first, overwhelmed to be near her again, he didn't register what he saw. Like the moon rising from the ocean, the robe parted around her belly and fell to either side.

"I'm sorry," she said. He couldn't breathe. He remembered sitting in a cafe near Victoria Harbor, water streaming down the glass front of the store, tea forgotten and cooling on the little round table between them. Face calm, but eyes too wet, hands knotted in her lap. _I said yes,_ she'd told him. _I'm sorry._ Then he got up and left her there, walked through the rain, into the city.

"Why didn't you tell me?" his voice was flat, not his voice, at all. His voice was screaming, begging, pleading, raw, so he kept it inside. Color rose on her cheeks and her lashes swept down to cover her eyes. She folded her hands on her stomach.

"Where's Haruto? Why aren't you on leave or something?" Abruptly anger swallowed up the hurt, old and new, and he clenched and unclenched his hands.

"He's at the Lagrangian conference in Moscow." She looked up at him, levelly. "And we must fight the kaiju."

She was so wholly Mako in that moment, so sure and stern, the faith and honor that were her warp and weft shining out upon him, that he looked away, willing the tears back. There was a long silence. Newt cleared his throat and they both looked at him. He looked miserably uncomfortable, pushing his glasses up his nose and studiously avoiding eye contact.

"You said you needed me," Raleigh said after a moment.

"Yes," Mako said. "Please, sit. Two of my cadets found Chuck Hansen yesterday."

Raleigh froze, halfway into his seat. Next to him Newt only sighed and frowned, toying with the hem of his shirt.

"Alive," Mako added, watching him carefully. "They pulled him from the water. We've been keeping him under observation. I haven't told Herc."

Raleigh sat down heavily. He felt gut-punched, empty and full at the same time. He'd only known Chuck for a handful of days and a handful of battles and the kid had been dead far longer than Raleigh had known him. And many others had died in those last days -- Pentecost not least among them. But in the intervening years, he'd built an idea of Chuck, a phantom, from Mako's stories and his own handful of memories, news clips and an illicit download of Chuck's PPDC file. It had felt necessary, after the Breach closed, and he'd done something similar with Stacker, though he knew the old Marshal better and of course had seen Mako's memories as well. But he'd especially needed to hold the short span of Chuck's life in his head. He'd stopped asking why. It was one of the questions he drank to forget. 

"What. Where-- Is it really him?" Raleigh wasn't sure if he wanted it to be Chuck or not, or what it would mean, to confront the man who was the object of his occasional and ongoing obsession. 

"DNA is a match," Newt said. "And he looks exactly like he did five years ago. I mean, _exactly_. Really, literally, exactly the same."

"Jesus," Raleigh said. His eyes were burning and his chest was tight and he could feel the itch starting up and knew it would only subside with a drink and a pushed pin. He glanced at Mako and looked away, quickly. She'd only asked him about Chuck once, when she found the copy of his service record on Raleigh's tablet. He hadn't known what to say then and he didn't know now. But then, he'd never had to spell anything out for Mako. She reached across the desk and squeezed his hand tightly until he met her eyes. 

"I don't know, Raleigh. How could it be him?" Mako said. "Nothing and no one could have survived the blast at that range."

"Does he know..." Raleigh paused, swallowed twice. "I mean, does he remember what--"

"He doesn't remember anything after the bomb," Newt said. "But he's, man, he's real fucked up. Sorry, Mako. I've got him doped out of his mind in the lab. At first I thought it was, like, PTSD or something. But here's the freaky part." Newt leaned toward Raleigh, excitement and concern flickering across his face in quick succession.

"When the kaiju attacked, he _knew_. He knew, like I knew."

"A residual Drift connection?" Raleigh asked, frowning. Newt nodded, raising his eyebrows.

"Yeah, but not just. We both had the dreams, just like Hermann and I did. But then, we were awake, right, and he just starts screaming and shouting all this weird shit-- sorry, Mako -- like, 'they're inside me', and he's clawing himself up, so I knocked him out again, right? But after, I was telling Mako and I realized--" Newt broke off, looking at Mako.

"He realized that Chuck -- if it is Chuck -- had an active connection to the kaiju. He was seeing the attack, or experiencing it somehow, as it was happening, through the kaiju mind."

Mako and Newt watched him expectantly. Raleigh tipped the chair onto its back legs and scrubbed his hands over his face.

"Fuck," he said, mind whirring and thoughts blurred. "So, what? What does that mean? They fuck his head up or something?"

"We don't know," Mako said. "But I can't have him on my base with an open connection to the kaiju in his head."

"Of course," Raleigh said, righting the chair and leaning forward to brace his elbows on his thighs.

"And we can't afford to let him go before we know what he is." Raleigh nodded absently, hearing _let him go_ and only half listening to the rest. Mako looked at Newt for a long moment, then back at Raleigh.

"So I'd like you to take him, and Newt, and whatever equipment he needs, to your apartment."

"Sorry," Raleigh said, "what?"

"You have plenty of room. And your neighbors have just been evacuated inland in the face of the kaiju resurgence. You will have the building to yourself. Just in case."

"Wait, Mako, I don't think this is a good--"

"Obviously the PPDC will pay a stipend for his care for the duration of his stay."

"It's not about the money, and you damn well know it," Raleigh said heatedly. "God damn it, Mako, can't you put him in a safe house somewhere, stick him under 24/7 guard or something? Jesus, Mako, you know, you _know_ \--" he broke off, fight draining out of him as fast as it had come. He ran his thumb nail across a chip in the veneer of the desk. "Why are you asking me to do this?"

"Raleigh," Mako said softly. "If he is Chuck, he has returned from the dead and it's a miracle. And if it is not Chuck..." She let the sentence trail off, shrugging. "Either way, I trust no one more than you."

"He should be with people he knows," Newt said. "He deserves more than waking up to a bunch of strangers."

Raleigh shook his head, mouth set in a firm line. This was not something she could ask of him. Not this. Mako took his hand in both of hers and leaned toward him.

"Maybe... this is why," she said softly. "All of it, what was here," and she touched the place above her heart, "and all that came after, maybe, this is why."

"Why what?" Newt asked, frowning. "Guys, are we even having the same conversation?"

"Please, Raleigh," Mako said. "Please."

He closed his eyes and he saw Chuck, furious and panting as Herc pulled him off Raleigh, and later, his crooked smile, fear and excitement in his eyes as they set out to save the world. He opened his eyes. He looked at Newt's earnest face, and at Mako, who already knew his answer.

"Fuck," he said, resigned. He was always going to say yes.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited 3/13/15 for structure, characterization, and increased angst.
> 
>  
> 
> First of all, and I know this is sounding like a broken record, but I'm a thousand, thousand times sorry for how long this chapter took. I've been a little depressed and writing through that shit is like wandering around a swamp in the fog. 
> 
> Secondly, and more importantly, thank you to everyone who's left comments or kudos! Every bit of feedback is like a little sun shining right on my face! 
> 
> Third, I haven't proofread this AT ALL, beyond a half-hearted spellcheck, so I apologize for any errors. I've been scouring the Pacific Rim wiki and finding out that I've made a few errors here and there. Please forgive these little inconsistencies until I get around to fixing them!
> 
> Last of all, enjoy!

The hand-off was accomplished with flawless efficiency. Raleigh and Newt parted ways at the elevator, Raleigh for the helipad and Newt, promising to see him shortly, to the labs. Raleigh stepped out of the elevator onto the busy airstrip and was immediately accosted by an apologetic transport officer, clutching his tablet to his chest.

"It was a malfunction with the electronics. We had to move it, sir. We've got supplies coming in and going out. You know, while we're clear." The transport officer glanced at the sun, just cresting in the sky, then in the direction of the open ocean. Before the kaiju return, he meant. Raleigh sighed, running his hands through his hair. 

"Damn it! No, it's not your fault, Lieutenant. I need to get back to the city. What have you got that's free this afternoon?"

"Nothing, sir. I'm sorry. It's just... there's a lot of people to move onto or off the base in a hurry. I might be able to find you a spot on a cargo transport, I'll just have to-- if you'll excuse me I'll just be..." The man rushed off, tapping away at the tablet and shouting to the deck crew.

Raleigh turned and paced down the length of the flight deck, soothed a little by the hustle and bustle. It felt good to be back on a military installation. It was nice to be around people who had obvious and stated functions and who fulfilled those functions with a minimum of fuss. He'd almost forgotten what it was like to take something at face value. The WCC was built on lies and secrets and nothing and no one was what they seemed to be. He almost bumped into a white faced cadet, hurrying from a crew transport with his arms full of boxes. 

"Sorry," the cadet said brusquely, then glancing up and recognizing Raleigh, "Sir. Excuse me. I wasn't watching where I was going."

"It's all right, cadet. It's my fault. I was reminiscing." Raleigh smiled his on-camera smile, comforting, confident, charming. The boy gazed up at him, awed, watching Raleigh even as his feet carried him away. It wasn't the same, Raleigh realized. When he'd been here last, everyone had been hardened by years of battle and loss. Even the relatively young had seemed worn and aged. But every face he saw scurrying past him was a true child's face. A few grizzled sergeants dotted the crowd, barking orders to the loading crews, and here and there a grey-headed pilot or mechanic crawled over a transport. 

There was something heartbreaking about it, seeing his past play out again, wondering which of these kids would lose a friend or a sibling or a lover, or be the one lost. It made him think of Chuck, and he couldn't have that, not right now, not until they were back at his flat and-- and. And then what? _Jesus, not now_ , Raleigh thought. _Keep it together, Becket._

The roots of his teeth were aching, all the small bones in his ears rubbing against each other. He rubbed his tongue over his gums, trying to kill the rising need. He slipped his hand into his trouser pocket and felt the thin, flat case he kept there. He only had four pins left, had been planning to pick up some more this evening, but that was okay, he only needed one, could only have one, because there were people, so many fucking people, and Mako would be disappointed if he got fucked up in public.

He slipped around a stack of plas-crete crates and pulled the little case out. Four clear tubes lay inside and within each one, the matte black carbon pins filled with Newt's special blend of endorphins and amphetamines and whatever else. Raleigh selected one at random, pinching the tip of the plastic tube carefully between his thumb and forefinger. There was a subtle perforation just below his fingers and he twisted the tip gently until it popped free. He drew the pin out of the tube, still holding it by the little piece of plastic between his fingers. He let the rest of the tube fall to the ground as he felt for the place behind his ear.

And then it was in and everything fell away from him and he just _was_. He wandered back toward the elevators and watched the loading and unloading and all the people seemed small enough to shelter in his hand, like maybe he could reach down into the sea and pluck the Shatterdome out, keep it safe from whatever horrors came next. Someone touched his elbow. He turned and saw a slight, dark haired girl in a cadet's uniform, doubled. There were two, he realized, as they led him away, through a loading bay and down to the docks. They were halfway there before he asked where they were going.

"Dr. Geiszler has a boat, going back to the city, sir," one of the girls said.

"He said to bring you, because your helicopter was down," the other finished.

Then they were there, and Newt was grinning at him from the deck of a beat up tug. New white lettering splayed across the peeling hull proclaimed her the _Drowning Sailor_. The girls stopped at the gang plank and Raleigh continued across.

"You bought a boat?" Raleigh asked as he came on board. Newt smiled, the crazed grin that had become so infrequent lately. It faded as Raleigh stopped before him. 

"Jesus, man," Newt said, then lowered his voice to a hiss. "Are you fucking high right now?" He brushed the hair back from Raleigh's ear and felt for the little stub of carbon. The tug gave a lurch as it pulled away from the dock and Newt grabbed Raleigh's forearm, dragging him down into the cabin.

"One pin, Newt, that's it. I was-- stressed. Mako, and Chuck, all of this--"

Newt stared at him, an expression on his face that Raleigh had never seen. Disappointment, maybe, something horrible, a tinge of disgust? Newt turned away and moved deeper into the cabin.

"He's in here," he said, following a path through pieces of mismatched furniture and storage crates. He pushed back a curtain and moved aside so Raleigh could see past him. It was dim, the only light filtering in through a dirty porthole, faintly illuminating a stretcher and the man strapped to it. 

"I had to keep him drugged," Newt said. Raleigh seemed to watch from outside his body as he moved closer to the man lying there, saw himself lean down to peer into the unconscious face, recoil with recognition. He felt like he'd been struck, like hairline fractures were radiating out from some place in his torso and he was vibrating apart along the fault lines. His nose was burning and he had to swallow to speak.

"Fuck," he felt, more than heard, himself say. Newt pulled him up and moved them away, tugging the curtain back into place.

"Yeah, man," he said. "It's a doozy."

* * *

They were met at the city docks by one of the utility flitters from Newt's more or less legitimate Drift-ware company. Half of the boxes from below decks were loaded into the back of the flitter and a row of seats was folded down to accommodate Chuck's stretcher. Newt dismissed the driver and climbed into the pilot seat. 

"Are you licensed?" Raleigh asked, as he strapped himself into the passenger seat. 

"Had to, man. Takes forever to get anywhere by surface streets. Hannibal bought a whole fleet of these as soon as they went on the market." Newt punched the ignition and the air compression pads hummed to life, ruffling the dock workers' hair as the craft was boosted into the air. Newt flipped a few switches and the craft rose steadily until the men moving about on the dock below were like ants. 

"Put your address into the GPS. We have to call in the flight path. Still kind of a pain in the ass while they get air traffic lanes figured out but there are only like 200 flitters in the city so it's not that bad if you stay out of the entertainment district."

The GPS unit beeped and flashed that their route had been approved. Newt accelerated and Raleigh watched the city flash by beneath them. They were high enough to turn the city and its streets into a child's toy, but not high enough to sanitize it completely. There was still a sense of teeming humanity, pulsing beneath the skin of buildings and flowing through streets.

They began to descend and shortly Raleigh's building came into sight. Raleigh directed Newt to the little plot of roof adjacent to his flat and Newt maneuvered the flitter neatly into the space. Between them they managed to get Chuck moved into the spare bedroom and the boxes unloaded into the largely unused dining room. 

"What's in all of these?" Raleigh asked. Newt ripped the tape off a box and pulled out a piece of metal and wire, brandishing it proudly.

"Lab supplies!" he said, grinning. Raleigh left Newt up to his elbows in packing pellets and headed for his bed. It was barely noon but he had to be at the WCC in eight hours and he'd been up all night. Plus, he was coming down a little and a few hours of sleep would not be amiss. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, but sleep would not come. 

He got up and poured himself a finger of Scotch from the decanter on the bedside table. He tossed the glass back and poured another. The alcohol burned down his throat and a blanket of warmth spread through his limbs and seeped into his mind. Alcohol fuzzed the ragged edges left behind by the fading pin. His brain was still. And into the stillness, like a pebble thrown, came Chuck. 

Raleigh went down the hall to Chuck's room and slipped inside. It was dark, blackout curtains over the windows, and still, like an empty room. Raleigh brought the room lights up to a dim glow and slid down into the chair opposite the bed. Chuck lay still beneath the blanket, exactly as they had placed him, his breathing shallow. But his eyes beneath his lids were moving frantically.

Raleigh watched him, sipping his drink and letting his mind still. In the center of everything, Chuck remained. When Raleigh and Mako had climbed out of the ocean and into legend, they brought Pentecost and Chuck with them. And all through the long rounds of publicity, the flashbang of gratitude and love and fame that came with being the Heroes of the Breach, they carried the bodies of their fellows on their backs and in their hearts. 

In the myth that arose out of the 24 hour news cycle and syndicated talk shows and YouTube clips, Stacker Pentecost became the beloved father who gave his life for his children and Chuck Hansen was enshrined as the golden son who was sacrificed that the world might be saved. In some way, Mako's burden was relieved as the two dead men moved safely from life to legend. But the weight on Raleigh's shoulders grew heavier and the pit inside him grew deeper. He ran from it, with the drugs and the Drift and the job at the WCC, but always he felt it pulling at his heels.

He'd had a therapist; they all had, after things calmed down. He knew about survivor's guilt and PTSD and the dangers of addiction, and he knew what the calm doctor in the flowing skirts and loose blouses couldn't know -- knew the set of a young man's jaw as he caressed his beloved dog for the last time, knew the catch in a father's voice as he told his daughter goodbye, and he knew the thing that he'd never told anyone, the secret he'd kept even from Mako, the reason he'd never climbed back into a cockpit after the Breach and would never Drift with anyone again. Raleigh Becket, hero, survivor, face of the WCC -- Raleigh Becket never crawled out of the Breach. The Breach crawled into him.

"Am I here?"

Raleigh jumped, slopping a little Scotch on himself. Chuck was awake, though he hadn't moved, staring at the ceiling, eyes gleaming in the low light. Raleigh felt pins and needles in his chest and his throat tightened. He put the glass carefully on the bedside table and forced himself to breathe. Chuck turned his head to face Raleigh and his eyes were frightening and empty.

"Yeah," Raleigh said, hoarsely, leaning forward. "Yeah, you're here." 

Chuck heaved a breath out and squeezed his eyes closed.

"Raleigh," he said, a hint of his usual drawl. Then his eyes darted around the room, taking in the ceiling, all the dark corners, the exits. "Jesus," he said. "Sometimes I think I'm still there. Sometimes, I--"

"Me, too," Raleigh said. Then, tentatively, because he'd never said it out loud, "We brought it back."

"I wish I'd stayed dead," Chuck said, closing his eyes. 

Maybe it was the drugs and the booze and the gloom, but Raleigh felt himself move as if in a dream, out of his chair to the edge of the bed. He stretched out a hand to Chuck's face, like a blind man, fingers running lightly over the rise and fall of his features, set in such detail in his memory. 

"Fuck," Raleigh whispered. "It's you."

Chuck caught Raleigh's wrist in his own, stilling the searching fingers. He looked up and Raleigh saw himself mirrored in the raw uncertainty on Chuck's face. The moment stretched between them, pregnant with some fragile, unformed thing. 

"Is it?" Chuck asked. It was the second time Raleigh had seen him like this, as just himself, with nothing that he wore for other people, naked. Raleigh felt trapped. His other hand came up to frame Chuck's face and Chuck's eyelashes fluttered closed. 

"Raleigh--" Chuck began.

Newt burst into the room, hefting a modified Drift deck and trailing wire and foam pellets. He froze just over the threshold, frowning at the two men on the bed.

"Raleigh?" he asked uncertainly.

"Newt?" Chuck said, puzzled.

"Chuck!" Newt said again. "Yeah, I had an idea, man. I'm modifying a Drift recorder with some of that stuff Mako gave me. I thought maybe you -- um. Also, what are you guys... doing?"

Chuck pulled himself up against the leather headboard and Raleigh stood, grabbing his drink and moving a few paces away. 

"What about the Drift?" Raleigh asked gruffly. Newt narrowed his eyes and pushed his glasses up his nose. 

"Don't try to distract-- okay, so it's pretty genius. So Chuck and I hook into the deck, and once the neural handshake is stable, we go into the Drift and-- and we see what's in his head. And we capture it and, I don't know, study it, or whatever! See what we find!" Newt looked from Chuck to Raleigh and back, huge smile spread across his face. Chuck looked blank. Raleigh looked furious.

"What?" Newt asked, defensive.

"Could you try not to look so fucking excited about digging around in his head? Jesus, Newt. This isn't one of your fucking street mods."

"What are you on about?" Chuck asked. "Record, what? How?"

"What the fuck else am I supposed to do, man?" Newt hissed. "Physically, I mean down to the DNA, like the tiniest possible variations, there's nothing. So we look inside. And that means the Drift."

Raleigh grit his teeth. He thought about the dark space inside himself, how he'd seen the same shadow staring at him out of Chuck's eyes, he thought about how hard he'd struggled to keep that knowledge from anyone else.

"No," Raleigh said.

"Are you the boss, now?" Chuck asked, and he was the Chuck from Raleigh's own memories, sneering and arrogant. "The future must be godawful if you're in charge." 

"You don't understand, Chuck--"

"You don't have a very good track record of protecting me, _Ra_ leigh, so I think I'll take this one myself, thanks." Raleigh felt the blood drain out of his face. He'd forgotten this about Chuck, his uncanny ability to find the sore spot and press. Newt was silent and shocked in the doorway. Chuck worked his jaw for a moment then seemed to force the words out. "You think I want to Drift again, ever? The last time I was in a Jaeger, I died, I fucking _died_." Chuck swallowed several times before he continued. "But there's something--in me. And whatever I am now, I'm not a coward."

Chuck stared at Raleigh as challengingly as he could, leant back and tucked into bed. A flare of anger cut through Raleigh's guilt. 

"I'd forgotten what a little shit you were," Raleigh said.

"Am, apparently," Chuck said trying for humor, but his smile was mirthless. 

"Right," Newt said, holding the tangle of wires and metal up. "So we'll both jack in and then--"

"It has to be Raleigh," Chuck said, still looking at Raleigh, and his face was defiant but he swallowed hard and his jaw was set like he was heading to battle. "Please," he forced out, like the word was a shard of glass.

The Breach was back behind Chuck's eyes and Raleigh knew it was filling up behind his own face. He wondered when it would swallow him. He wondered if it had already. _This isn't everyone's_ , he thought. _But it's ours._

"All right," he said, and he felt like he'd just agreed to jump off the side of a bridge, like he'd already jumped and was waiting for the inevitable impact. "Yeah. I'll Drift with you."


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raleigh and Chuck Drift together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited 3/15/15 -- this was probably 50% rewritten, mostly for better characterization and some new plot elements. The rewrites are getting more and more intensive every chapter...
> 
> At long last, an update! I want to thank everybody who has commented and kudo'd and read. Ultimately, you were the thing that brought me back to this. Also, thank you to every one who had such kind words for me and encouraged me to take care of myself. I followed your advice and I'm better for it. I wish I could promise a more regular update schedule but I don't want to lie to you; I got a writing internship and that, combined with my day job, has me sprinting about from morning until night. But I do love this story and I'm committed to finishing it, come hell or high water! Thank you for bearing with me and please, if you've enjoyed this, hated it, have praise or criticism, leave a comment! 
> 
> As yet unbeta'd (as always).

"So, we take a shit load of psychedelics, and then we, what, go into the Drift to face my darkest fears or something?" Chuck asked skeptically as he watched Newt submerge the rack of pins in a flask of thick, clear liquid. A flood of tiny bubbles rose up as the pins were filled. Newt pushed his glasses higher onto his nose and made a note on his tablet.

"Well," he said, "I mean, that's really, that's oversimplifying it, man. It's a proprietary chemical mixture designed to heighten Drift experience, allowing us to record, with varying degrees of success and detail, your neural impulses. Your memories, in layman's terms. Of course, there has been some recreational use and abuse." Newt pulled a mess of circuitry across the table, busying himself with it and pointedly not looking at Raleigh. Raleigh was staring at the back of Newt's head with a blankness that managed to radiate hostility.

"What am I missing?" Chuck asked, glancing between Newt and Raleigh.

"Nothing," Raleigh said after a moment. "Are you hungry?

* * *

 

"This isn't half bad," Chuck said later, through a mouthful of potatoes and eggs.

"Don't sound so surprised," Raleigh said wryly, pushing his food around with his fork.

"Well, I'm not putting it all down to your cooking," Chuck said. "I've been eating reconstituted protein for years."

"How old were you?" Raleigh asked, eyes on his plate. He knew already, knew all these basic facts about Chuck's life, but he felt a little giddy at getting the answers from the source.

"Nine," Chuck said. He took a sip of water. "Ten when Scissure hit Sydney." He paused, staring out the kitchen window that overlooked the bay. "Then Dad went into the Academy and it was mess hall fare from then on out."

"I grew up in Anchorage, you know," Raleigh said. Chuck looked at him, surprised. "Me and Yance, and our little sister. Our dad used to take us camping on Kodiak Island. It was really. It was beautiful before they built the Academy there." 

"I hated it," Chuck said. "The cold. And the fish smell. All the fucking salmon you could eat." 

"At least you had Mako, though," Raleigh said, smiling a little. Chuck was frowning at him and Raleigh thought, _Fuck, I'm not supposed to know that_ , and floundered for an explanation. "She told me. About how you were the only kids at the Academy."

"What happened with you and her?" Chuck asked suddenly. "Is she-- I guess I just thought, if anyone was getting a fairy tale ending, it would've been you two."

"Well, she's a general now. Hong Kong's her Shatterdome. And she's. She's married," Raleigh said, spearing a piece of sausage with a little too much force. He saw her belly curving out beneath her dress, her hands folded over the top. "Not to me."

"How'd you fuck that up?" Chuck asked, and he looked genuinely curious. The light caught his eyes and Raleigh couldn't look away. Almost without meaning to, he told the truth. 

"I couldn't let go," Raleigh said. "She was stronger than me. I was stuck, and she moved on. So."

Raleigh wondered why he hadn't just told his standard lie -- both too busy rebuilding the world, work pushed them apart, too driven, sad but understandable. He was afraid he would see pity creep into Chuck's eyes, the way it crept into everyone who knew the truth. He shouldn't have worried.

"God, Raleigh," Chuck said on an exhale. "What a cock up." He set to work clearing his plate and Raleigh sat in shock for a moment. He forced down a few more bites of food before giving up.

"I've got to get ready for work," he said, pushing his stool back from the kitchen counter and gathering his dishes.

"Leave it," Chuck said. "There haven't been any advances in dish washers in the past five years, have there?"

"Chuck Hansen. You've gone domestic in your old age." Raleigh smirked at him and Chuck flushed a little.

"Yeah, well, let's not talk about age, old man. And don't get used to it," Chuck grumbled. "I won't be here forever."

"Yeah," Raleigh said, suddenly awkward. "Well. Thanks. For the dishes."

He thought about the exchange as he showered and dressed. It was the longest conversation he'd ever had with the other man. He really knew next to nothing about him, first hand. _He hates the cold_ , Raleigh thought. It was the first thing Chuck had ever told him about himself. He imagined Chuck, reunited with Herc, finding a nice girl, living out his life somewhere sunny and warm. It was far more likely he'd end up in some kind of military prison or lab. Or die fighting the kaiju. Again. There were a lot more worst case scenarios than best case scenarios, but all of them caused something to fist in his chest. Raleigh wondered what Chuck's best case scenario would be, if he had the choice. 

Raleigh knotted his tie mechanically and pulled on his jacket. He'd gotten used to suits, finally, and he secretly enjoyed the play of textures -- crisp, smooth fabric of his shirt, heavy silk of his tie, subtle weave of suit fabric. He ran his fingers down the front of his jacket and there was no catch. He looked at his finger pads and they were smooth: no hint of the welder's roughness, no pilot's callouses. He wondered when they had faded and felt suddenly that he had dreamed the whole of his former life; that perhaps it had been a particularly good mod and it had imprinted him like in the urban legends of Drift tech gone bad. He heard a low whistle and turned to find Chuck leaning in the door frame.

"Raleigh," he said, eyebrows raised. "You clean up good."

Raleigh grinned at him and turned back to the mirror.

"Good to know you approve," he said, grinning. 

"It's not that I approve, or, I don't _dis_ approve, I just. You know. Whatever." A flush was creeping up Chuck's neck and he was suddenly very interested in the wood under his toes. Raleigh made a note to get him some shoes. He wondered idly what Chuck might look like in a suit, if he'd be a sharp dresser or lean toward something more casual, grungier. Chuck cleared his throat and Raleigh realized he'd been staring. Chuck crossed his arms across his chest, cheeks still red, and swallowed a couple of times.

"Where do you work now, anyway?" he asked.

"I'm head of the Security Council for the World Crisis Coalition." At Chuck's blank look he added, "They're like the UN was, and about as useful. Are you old enough to remember when they were around?"

"Right, do you have a clear idea of how old I am?" Chuck asked, narrowing his eyes. Raleigh grinned at him.

"Sorry, you just look like so young." He stared intently at Chuck, struck suddenly by the truth of what he'd said. There was no trace of the past five years in his face; he might as well have stepped from that last day in the Shatterdome straight into Raleigh's apartment. Chuck met his eyes.

"Right," he said. "I'm twenty-six, I guess. Unless, maybe they don't count the years that you're dead." His voice was distant and his eyes were focused on a point just over Raleigh's shoulder.  Raleigh grabbed his arm, shaking him a little.

"Hey," he said. "Newt's going to figure this out."

"Yeah," Chuck said, coming back to himself a little. "Yeah. Well. Have fun at school. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"No problem," Raleigh said. "I don't think there are any ass kickings on the agenda."

Four hours later, Raleigh was revising his assessment. His aide, Vera, was slumped back in her chair, her usually immaculate suit jacket rumpled across the shoulders, eyes fixed on the middle distance. The bickering had begun before the meeting was even properly in session and the representatives from the Americas had now proposed a motion to formally reprimand the PPDC -- and Mako in particular -- for launching Jaegers without proper authorization from the WCC. The motion was gathering steam and with each lengthy, chest-pounding speech, Raleigh was losing his grip on his temper.

"The PPDC is still technically an autonomous body," Raleigh finally burst out, startling Vera out of her stupor. "And furthermore, none of you knows a thing about kaiju combat. You all spent the war so far inland--"

"Thank you, Mr. Becket," the chairman said, cutting him off. "I'd like to remind you that you are here as a courtesy only. This meeting is for territorial representatives. If and when we are ready for Security Council briefings, you will be welcome to speak."

The current chairman of the WCC was a sour little man who had spent the entirety of his life oiling the bureaucratic machine of one organization or another. His face was a pastiche of Anglo and Asian features --definitely surgically applied, most likely designed to appeal subconsciously to the widest number of ethnic groups. He'd gotten dental implants at some point, too, and the row of teeth he flashed at Raleigh now were blunt and even, like little squares of gum.

"He's horrid," Vera said out of the side of her mouth. He smiled wryly and shook his head. The meeting moved ponderously on but the energy was gone and it was clearly winding down. By the time all the egos in the room had been suitably pandered to and the meeting adjourned, it was past midnight. Vera snagged him on his way out of the room to go over his schedule for the next couple of days.

"I'm sorry," Raleigh finally interrupted her. "I don't know what you said. At all."

"It's fine," she huffed. "I'll load it on your phone. Just, promise you'll look it over?"

"Promise," he said, as he followed her down to the lobby. A throng of black sedans blocked traffic in front of the building. Raleigh groaned.

"Welcome to the city," Vera said humorlessly as she loaded him into his car, tapping her frighteningly well-manicured nails on the roof. "You should be home in time to turn around and come back."

"A meeting in the morning?" Raleigh asked. Vera smiled and it was menacing.

"Check your schedule," she said and slammed the car door.

* * *

 

"How are we going to get him upstairs?"

"I've got him."

Raleigh felt himself pulled sideways, then he was engulfed in warm night air. He struggled to open his eyes. Chuck's face swam into focus, Newt a dim shape behind him. Raleigh grunted, trying to stand and tangling his feet together on the curb.

"Whoa," Chuck said, steadying Raleigh against his shoulder. "Come on, mate, get your feet under you."

"Tired," Raleigh muttered. Chuck laughed quietly.

"Yeah," he said. "Let's get you into bed."

* * *

 

Raleigh woke in his own bed with no memory of getting into it. His fingers went reflexively to his ear but he felt no pins. He fumbled for his phone and found it on the bedside table. It was noon. Vera had uploaded his schedule and, despite her hints to the contrary, he was clear for the next 24 hours, with a follow up call the next morning to go over the Security Council's final report before it was submitted to the full WCC. He'd figured as much; in his experience, bureaucrats held onto their power for as long as possible, whether it was in their best interest or not. He fell back against the sheets, sighing and pulling into a stretch.

He rose, bemused to find himself in his underwear, and pulled on a pair of sweats. He looked at himself in the mirror, noting the dark circles under his eyes, the stubble lining his jaw. He looked like shit. And he felt like shit, strung tight, jittery, and he'd just woken up. He debated pushing a pin before he went to find something to eat but he remembered Newt's face on the boat and decided against it. He went out into the living room and found Newt hunched before a terminal, fingers flying over a keyboard. Chuck was stretched out on the floor, the modified Pons on his head.

"What the fuck, man?" Raleigh said, moving around the couch and crouching beside Chuck.

"Just a mod," Newt said. "Calm down. He wanted to know what we were doing with Drift tech these days. I wanted some readings."

"Bring him up," Raleigh said. Newt sighed and typed out a string of commands on the terminal. Chuck's body tensed suddenly and then slowly relaxed, a muscle at a time. Raleigh lifted the Pons gently from Chuck's head. Beneath it, Chuck's eyes were closed. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.

"Hey," Raleigh said softly.

"Jesus," Chuck said. He opened his eyes and stared at Raleigh, lost. He sobbed once, then huffed out a breath, sat up. "That's different. Fuck me, people do this for _fun_?"

"Yeah, well. They do it for all sorts of reasons. You all right?" Raleigh asked. He reached behind Chuck's ear and felt the prick of a pin. "For fuck's sake, Newt!"

"It's one pin, Raleigh. Used as directed." Newt had pushed his glasses up into his hair and narrowed his eyes. "And you're one to talk." Chuck looked back and forth between the, comprehension dawning on his face.

"For Christ's sake, Raleigh," he said, pushing himself to his feet. "You're a fucking junkie?" 

"Chuck," Raleigh said tightly, clenching his fists.

"No wonder Mako threw you out."

Raleigh had almost forgotten what rage felt like, hot and thick in his stomach, burning like bile into his throat. It flared up in him and left him breathless.

"You never did have any fucking manners, you know that?"

"You wanna talk about manners, mate?" Chuck said, taking a step toward him.

"I'm gonna do more than talk," Raleigh said, fisting his hands in Chuck's shirt.

"Let's fucking see it, then," Chuck snarled. 

"Uh, guys?" Newt said. "Can we dial down the testosterone? Please? Like, just thirty milligrams less of testosterone right now."

Raleigh realized he was panting, inches from Chuck's furious face, and he was so goddamned _young_. It brought Raleigh back into himself and he forced himself to let go of Chuck's shirt and step back. He was an adult and this violent posturing shit was a younger man's game. He could feel the rage under his skin, contained, but only just. He forced himself to breath in through his nose, then out. He looked at Newt.

"There's no way we're Drifting together," he said.

"Too fucking right," Chuck muttered. "We'd never make it past the handshake."

"Uh, well," Newt said. "I mean, I'm looking at the scans, guys, and I gotta tell you. I don't think it'll be as hard as you might think." 

"No way," Raleigh said. "We are not compatible."

"We're like Drift inhospitable," Chuck said, smirking, and Raleigh was amazed that _this_ was the man he'd spent five years memorializing in his mind.

"Well guys, I do this for living. I _invented_ this. Literally. Raleigh, I've seen your scans so many times, man, I could draw a diagram from memory." Newt tapped the screen of his console. "These are compatible. And besides," Newt scooped up two headsets of wire and circuit boards and held them out, "do you want to know what's going on in there or not?"

Chuck looked like he was trying to decide whether or not he was going to cut off his nose to spite his face. He glanced up at Raleigh, then reached out and snagged one of the sets. Raleigh took the other.

"And take two of these," Newt said fumbling for a glass vial of pins and passing it to Raleigh.

"I can do it," Chuck said stubbornly. Raleigh ignored him, tamping down on the little flicker of anger, tapping a pin out into his palm and pushing Chuck's head lightly to the side. Chuck resisted for a minute and then turned his head with a huff. Raleigh pinched the head of the pin there, pulling it out with ease. "Don't move." He brushed his finger into the little hollow behind Chuck's ear and circled it lightly, pushing up slightly against the back of his ear. Chuck jerked a little, then held himself still. Raleigh lined the pin up against the tip of his nail and pushed it into the soft skin. He tapped another pin into his palm and planted it next to the first. He felt the points catch against the pad of his finger as he pulled away.

"Whoa," Chuck said, swaying. Raleigh helped him to the couch and then pushed two pins, himself. The wash of the drug through his system was instant, like sinking suddenly into a warm, effervescent bath. He sat next to Chuck on the couch, and felt the room expand and contract with his breathing. He fumbled with the Pons, the feel of the electricity vibrating through the headset almost overwhelming his motor control. Newt was helping Chuck into his, propping him up as he eased the prongs over his head.

Somehow he got the Pons settled on his head, nerves tingling with the connection.

"All right, guys. Prepare for neural handshake in three... two..." Newt punched the Drift set and Raleigh felt the familiar wrench as he was thrown into the Drift.

* * *

 

Red-dark like behind closed eyes. Like slow blood. Like nothing. Raleigh reached out with the part of himself that was in the Drift and felt the Drift reach back. He'd Drifted hundreds of times, thousands, and it had never been like this. No rush of memories, no battling egos -- no self, no other. He fought to return to his body, to separate his mind from the darkness, but Newt's drugs held him immobile.

And suddenly a searing pain, like acid, burning across every inch of his skin. Knives in his lungs, twisted metal bones and he felt his eyes melting and reforming in their sockets, over and over, a thousand times and the screaming went on and on, and it was him screaming, he could feel his jaw stretched wide around the shape of it.

Raleigh fought through the pain, building his body inch by inch outward from his mouth, until he was himself and he could step aside from the memory and observe. What he found made him retch. Even in the Drift he felt the vomit burn its way up his throat.

"Jesus. Fuck. Oh, Jesus. Let me out. NEWT! LET ME OUT!" Raleigh turned from the red ruin of Chuck's memory and fled into the Drift. Before him and behind him and to either side, Chuck's remembered agony played out in a thousand different ways. And Raleigh ran, screaming, trying to block it out. He ran, battering shreds of memory away, until--

Mako. Smiling down at him. Light shining through the curtain of her hair. Her sharp hips under his hands as he pulled her down to him. He mouthed at her slight breast and she gasped, moving against him, and he let himself be pulled into her, into her scent, into her wet heat--

"Raleigh."

Raleigh turned away, out of the memory and saw Chuck, curled in on himself, eyes wide and streaming, chest heaving as he struggled to breathe.

"Raleigh. Help me." Raleigh reached for him.

"We're going," he said. "This was a bad idea. I'll get you out, just stay with me." Chuck shrugged him off.

"No." His voice was raw, and Raleigh remembered the screams. "If I leave. I'm not coming back."

Chuck lifted his head and met Raleigh's eyes. There was something about him just then, small and beaten and terrified but unrelenting, so utterly unlike the face Chuck wore in the real world -- it reminded Raleigh strongly of Mako.

"Please, Raleigh." 

"God damn it. Come on." Raleigh pulled Chuck upright. As soon as their hands touched, the Drift went silent. Chuck stiffened and turned his head suddenly, like a horse spooked by a sharp sound. Raleigh turned with him--

\--and the bomb detonated. Pain like color and no sound and time slowed as he watched himself disintegrate and gave himself up to the black. In the Drift, he felt Pentecost die, too, pain and fear and hope and love filling up his head and spilling out again like water in a sieve.

Then, for a long while, nothing.

Like a storm building, an implacable pull, like a magnet or a vacuum, and he was separated out of the nothingness, condensed back into something like himself, until he existed again, in some innerspace--

"You were back in the Drift," Raleigh whispered disbelievingly.

"Oh, God," Chuck breathed, grasping at Raleigh's arm, struggling to stay apart from the memory unfolding around them.

\--enormous pressure, forcing him back into the physical, into what lay on the metal table beneath cold white lights--

"Jesus, God, I want to go back, please, Raleigh, please," Chuck was cursing and begging in equal measure. Raleigh held him tight against his side, clinging to him as much as comforting him.

"We have to watch, Chuck." Chuck sagged against him moaning and mumbling incoherently.

\--as pain flared down new nerve endings, first in darkness, in blindness and deafness, bones and sinews and veins burning into being, then his eyes, lidless and staring, alien hands moved over him, alien tools layered muscle and skin in a reverse flaying, and breath moved in his lungs and blood burned in his veins and the nub of flesh at the back of his mouth grew into a tongue and he screamed until he felt blood in his throat. His body reformed in the edges of his vision and his mind dissolved into itself and there--

"There's something there," Chuck whispered. Even in the Drift his eyes were closed tightly, as if eyes in the Drift had anything to do with seeing.

\--and there _was_ something. At the edge of Chuck's mind, at the edge of madness, a blunt, slick, massive _something_ held him together, kept him conscious, as his life was burned back into him, a million, million points of light that moved together as one, one purpose, one life, one mind--

"Kaiju," Raleigh said, but Chuck shook his head.

"No. Something else." Raleigh turned to Chuck and found him staring fixedly out into the Drift. Something prickled across Raleigh's mind and he felt dread settle over him. In the vastness of the Drift, the million, million points of light came together and went out and the _something else_ was there with them. Raleigh was pulled suddenly into Chuck's memory and they were chasing the RABIT through Chuck's neighborhood in Sydney, and they walked along a stone wall, sunlight hot on the back of their necks, and beside them, was it mother, her hand on their arm, _come, come, come, safe, safe, home_ \-- and suddenly Raleigh was separate and before him he saw a sandy-headed boy, a million, million lines of light trailing behind him as he walked, and beside him--

"Oh my God," Raleigh said. "We have to go. Come on Chuck, we have to GO."

The part of his mind that was still with Chuck saw a smiling, brown haired woman in a loose, patterned dress that swirled around her calves. Another part of him, the part that was Raleigh again, saw a towering creature with disjointed limbs, too many legs and insect arms, hard and bright and no color, and every color. It turned its crested head toward Raleigh, drawing Chuck close with a crooked forelimb. Thought hit him like a physical force, wrapping around him, splitting his head, reaching inside, a light curiosity as it ran all of his life backward and forward, curdling suddenly into hostility -- and he was himself, detonating Gipsy and scrambling for the escape pod, and he was Another, watching as the machine fell from the sky and down into the creations' enclosure and the star-bright implosion, too late, but the others would know and -- 

The Drift howled and the alien creature screamed in his mind, _you, you_ , and _hate_ came up to drown him. He saw Gipsy cutting down kaiju after kaiju, and he understood that this was the Master of them all, of the kaiju and even of their makers. This was the intellect Newt had seen, that had forced Chuck back into himself and held him there. If there was a hive mind, this was its queen. It threw Chuck down, wrapping the lines of light around a serrated limb and dragging him along as it advanced on Raleigh. 

"Chuck," Raleigh said. "Chuck, CHUCK, listen to me, listen to my voice, god _damn_ it! CHUCK!"

"Raleigh." Chuck struggled to his knees, glassy-eyed, tried to rise to his feet to keep from being dragged. "What's wrong with Mother?"

"Your mother's dead," Raleigh said, backing away. "They killed her. They sent monsters to kill her. Look at her, Chuck. Look at her."

With great effort, Chuck looked up and horror spread across his face. He tangled his hands in the lines of light and the creature turned back toward him. Raleigh darted forward and together they tore at the lines, like arteries beneath their desperate fingers. Fury and hate seethed out of the creature, leaving them both gasping. Raleigh retched and gagged as wave after wave hit them.

"Don't stop," Chuck choked out. "Don't stop. Here, here." The lines were beginning to fray and the creature was backing away from them, pulling the strands tight until one by one they snapped and at last Chuck was free, and they turned and ran and Raleigh reached out, past the Drift, seeking the safety of his own mind. He brushed against the barrier of Newt's drugs and with a frantic effort, broke past it.

He opened his eyes and struggled upright. Beside him on the couch, Chuck's mouth was twisted in a silent scream. Behind him, Raleigh heard Newt fumbling with something on the kitchen table. Chuck went suddenly rigid and began to seize.

"Cut the connection!" Raleigh's voice came out shrill and raw. "GET US OUT."

The part of his mind that was still doubled in the Drift was on fire. The broken lines of the hive mind were bleeding and the red darkness was almost upon them. Chuck was screaming his name.

Then they were out of the Drift. Newt leapt over the back of the couch and ripped the Pons off Chuck's head, pressing a hypodermic to his wrist. Chuck slumped sideways. Raleigh crawled across the couch and pulled Chuck into his lap.

"You're here," he said hoarsely. "I'm here. We're out."

Chuck struggled to keep his eyes open.

"Raleigh?" He rasped, swallowing and cringing at the pain.

"Yes. Yes, I'm here." Raleigh smoothed Chuck's hair back, something his mother had done when he was sick, the only comforting gesture he could think of.

"Raleigh," Chuck said again, slurring, eyes rolling back. "She saw you. They're coming."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for self-harm, as well as everything else in the tags.
> 
> Chapter 7, brought to you by my lovely new beta - unrepentantdom! Any mistakes left are mine and I hope you enjoy, despite them!
> 
> I know it's been rough going for the boys, but I promise they'll be getting their acts together soon. Also, warnings in this chapter for self-harm and drug use, as well as (finally) some sex.
> 
> I've got an insane schedule this month but I'll try to write some over the holiday, which reminds me, Happy Thanksgiving (if you celebrate it!) and if you're in sales, I hope you don't have to work on the day of!

Chuck woke up 12 hours later. He shattered the mirror on the dresser and carved long, red grooves in his forearms before Raleigh and Newt wrestled him to the ground and sedated him again. While he slept, they bandaged his arms and stripped the room bare. Then Raleigh settled himself on the floor by the door to begin a grim watch, and Newt disappeared into the dining room workspace to review the recordings of their time in the Drift. They agreed to tell Mako nothing of what they had seen, only of Chuck's warning.

A day passed. A late summer heat had settled over the city and the air was close and still. The news showed an outbreak of small violent acts peppered randomly across the city and Mako reported that the pilots were restless. She called twice a day, in the morning and just after the start of night shift at the Shatterdome. Despite Chuck's ominous premonition, there was no sign of kaiju and the Breach was quiet. That night, Raleigh woke up to find Chuck braining himself on the edge of the window sill. After that, Newt kept him sedated all the time.

The next day Raleigh went back to the WCC and the tempers of the world's politicians and leaders were as high as the rest of the city's. They tabled the Security Council's report and argued over how to split the mounting costs of the Jaeger program. Raleigh came home. Checked on Chuck. Mako called. He took a shower. Went to sleep. Outside, the sky was filled with black, heavy clouds and the heat pressed oppressively down into the streets. A man was murdered outside Raleigh's building that night, a senseless crime, an argument that went too far, and the news would blame it on the rising tension and strange mood that seemed to hold the city in thrall. 

Chuck slept on in his drug induced coma, Raleigh moved in exhausted ellipses from the apartment to the various meetings and back again, and Newt pored over his recordings. They went on like this for two more days.

In the evening, when Newt had collapsed into bed after nearly 36 hours of manic research and Raleigh had begun to take the edge off the ragged remains of his day with a drink or two, there was a knock at the door. Raleigh opened it to find a thin, sallow woman smoking a cigarette and scuffing her shoes on the hall carpet.

"It's no smoking," Raleigh said.

"Right. Sorry." She took a last drag of her cigarette and ground it out on the sole of her beat up tennis shoe. She looked around for somewhere to put it, shrugged, and stuck the butt in the pocket of her jean vest.

"Hey, man," she said, "Is Newt here?" She had the pinhead's habit of reflexively feeling behind her ear and her words had a hint of the familiar thickness that said she was just a little high.

"He's asleep," Raleigh said, wondering what this junkie wanted with Newt, wondering if she had any on her. He'd been parceling out his dwindling supply of pins for the past few days, since Newt had told him to go score on the street if he needed it that bad and also, go away, because he was busy.

"That's all right. I'll wait." She slipped under his arm and into the apartment, fishing a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of her bag and pulling one out with her lips. She smelled like gasoline and sweat.

"You got a balcony? Somewhere I can smoke?" She ran a hand through her short, tufted hair, taking in the room in a few rapid glances. She spotted the glass full of used pins on the coffee table and pulled the cigarette out of her mouth.

"Hey. You get high?" she asked, lifting her eyebrows incredulously. She peered at him, like she was pushing the veil of drugs aside and peeking out for the first time.

"Raleigh Becket, huh? I'm Leese. I work with Newt. Or, for him, I guess." She stuck out a blunt, four-fingered hand and he took it, staring at the stump of her index finger as he shook it. She smiled at the look on his face.

"Yeah, it's pretty fucked up, huh? That was Hannibal. Back when I was a little more expendable." She sat on the edge of the couch and pulled a small zippered bag from the inside of her vest. She opened it and began to spread her paraphernalia on the coffee table.

"So, Newt's out? I've been trying to get a hold of him for a couple of days. Got a new Drift mod that's just like, decadent, but after the last one I have to run everything by him before--" She stopped suddenly and looked at him. "You okay, man? You look like shit. Here, sit down."

Raleigh sat, a little overwhelmed by this woman, and also really, really interested in her set-up on the table.

"It's been a rough couple of days," he said finally. She nodded, tapping a large, liquid-filled capsule out of a bottle. She loaded it into a kind of fat, needle-less syringe and pushed the plunger. He saw that the inside of the syringe was actually lined with pins, and as she pulled the plunger slowly out, the liquid was drawn into them. She gently pushed a couple of pins out into her hand and held them out to him. She grinned at him, revealing nicotine stains on her teeth.

"You want to do the honors, or shall I?"

* * *

 

And the next thing Raleigh knew, there were 5 people in the living room, hooked up to his Drift set, trying out Leese's new mod, and he was leaning against the kitchen island with a blonde girl's mouth around his cock. It was one of those startling and complete time losses he sometimes experienced when he pushed too many pins, too fast. Like the last few hours (or days, sometimes) had been carefully excised from his mind and now here he was. This was one of the better places he'd come back to himself.

The girl's lips were loose and sloppy, but she was dedicated, and Raleigh felt like he could breathe for the first time since he and Chuck had come screaming out of the Drift. He put a hand on the back of the girl's head, brushed her hair out of her face. She glanced up at him as she pulled back and sucked on the head of his cock. He realized he knew her, one of the socialites that hung around with the edgier members of Hong Kong's social elite. Of which he was one, he guessed. He smiled vaguely at her and pushed her head gently back down. He gave himself up into the wet heat and let his eyes slip closed. It felt nice, he decided. He might even come.

He opened his eyes, was about to let the girl know, and saw Chuck, holding himself up on the door frame, watching him. For a long moment, Raleigh just watched him back. It was so startlingly like that moment when Mako found him all those years ago that he felt himself back there, like his consciousness had twinned and he was existing in both instants simultaneously. Then Chuck shuffled a few steps into the kitchen and the continuity broke. Raleigh jerked upright and pushed the girl off him.

"Hey!" she said, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. She looked up at him, too high to be really angry, and then turned to see what he was looking at. She pushed herself up from her knees, wobbling slightly, grabbing onto the refrigerator to steady herself.

"Oh my God," she said, staring open-mouthed at Chuck. "Oh my God, you look like Chuck Hansen. Like, just like him. Has anybody ever told you that?" She stumbled toward him and Chuck shrank in on himself. Raleigh grabbed her around the waist and turned her away from Chuck. Her head followed her body on a delay and she stared at him with glassy eyes.

"He gets that a lot," Raleigh said. He laughed, suddenly, because it would be hilarious if all their secrecy was undone by this stupid girl going down on him in his kitchen. He stopped laughing, because that wasn't really very funny at all.

"Same chin," Raleigh said. "Different hair though. It's just dark in here."

"Yeah," the girl said. A smile melted across her lips and she sagged a little in his arms. "Hahaha, oh man, I'm so fucking high right now. You look like Raleigh Becket."

She laughed again, and tottered back toward the lights and low music in the living room. Raleigh turned around and found Chuck only a few feet away. His hair was matted and sweaty and there were dark circles around his eyes. He was staring at Raleigh with a feverish intensity, and it reminded Raleigh somehow of the red-dark he'd seen in Chuck's memories. Chuck moistened his lips and glanced down, and Raleigh felt like he'd been freed from some heavy burden.

He realized suddenly that his dick was still hanging out of his pants and he felt himself flush, the sensation heightened by the four pins behind his ear. He moved his hand in what felt like slow motion, the air offering a too-dense resistance, and was surprised to find Chuck's hand already there. His touch was light, his hand just resting there. Raleigh looked into his face and saw behind the fever to the vacuum, to the emptiness. He felt like he was balanced on a wire, somewhere very high. Chuck closed his hand around Raleigh's penis and Raleigh covered Chuck's hand with his own.

"Wait," he rasped. He cleared his throat. "Wait," he said again. This wasn't right. Chuck was not him. Chuck was the sacrifice, the Son who gave his life so humanity could survive, selfless and good, golden, something, something like a saint. Chuck wasn't this, this slick need and hunger. Chuck was not him. He wouldn't make Chuck like him, broken and miserable and a lie, a ghost--

"I am, I am," Chuck was saying and Raleigh realized he'd been speaking aloud. Chuck had Raleigh's face between his hands. "I already am, Raleigh." Then their mouths were pressed together and Raleigh let out a breath like a sob. Chuck's lips were raw and bitten against his mouth, and Raleigh pressed his tongue between them, prying them open until they were panting against each other, tongues and teeth and lips. Chuck was clumsy, pressing himself against Raleigh with frightening need, but hands unsure on Raleigh's shoulders, his back, brushing through his hair.

Raleigh felt himself babbling into Chuck's mouth, as he pressed kisses to his jaw, his neck, across his sharp collar bones. Raleigh wasn't sure what he was saying, but it felt like prayers, like reverence, like worship in his hands as he caressed every part of Chuck he could reach. Chuck made an angry sound in his throat and his hands fisted in Raleigh's hair, pulling his head up and kissing him hard. Chuck bit down viciously on Raleigh's lip and Raleigh groaned, unable to tell the difference between pain and pleasure with so much of the drug in his system.

Chuck bit him again, drew blood, and reached between them to fist Raleigh's cock. His grip was awkward and dry but the friction was overload for Raleigh's brain.

"Like this," Chuck panted against his mouth. "I don't want that other shit. I want it like this." Then he sucked Raleigh's lip into his mouth and sucked at the bite mark he'd left there. Raleigh went liquid, his cock suddenly painfully hard, and he was fumbling with Chuck's sweat pants, pulling them down, over his hips, revealing Chuck's own erection. Raleigh pushed Chuck back against the refrigerator and sank to his knees, his arm a bar across Chuck's hips, and pressed his face against Chuck's thigh.

"Like this, like this," he muttered, nuzzling at the base of Chuck's cock and giggling a little. Chuck started to push him away and Raleigh slipped his lips over the head of Chuck's cock. Chuck’s head went back against the refrigerator with a solid _thunk_ , and Raleigh slid down to take more into his mouth. He hadn't done this in years, but when he'd done it, he'd always been high and giving head like this was second nature to him.

Chuck was making little keening noises above him and Raleigh wrapped his lips around his teeth and worked Chuck's cock in and out of his mouth in a steady rhythm. He pulled back to the head, swirling his tongue just under the edge and looked up at Chuck. His head was thrown back against the refrigerator door, his chin thrust up, and his face was twisted in that beautiful agony right on the edge of orgasm. He opened his eyes and looked down at Raleigh, beautiful, beautiful, and Raleigh swallowed him down until his nose was pressed against Chuck's groin.

Chuck stiffened and came, and Raleigh swallowed around his cock, drawing the orgasm out until Chuck's knees wavered and he had to pull off and catch Chuck around the waist and hold him up. Chuck grabbed onto the refrigerator door handle and hauled himself upright, his face turned away, breathing hard. Raleigh felt his own cock twitch at the picture of incongruous debauchery, the frantic sucking-off in the kitchen. He fisted himself loosely, the sensation nothing to compare with the rough handling Chuck had given him.

He reached out to Chuck to draw him down to where Raleigh still knelt on the ground but Chuck pushed him away. Raleigh saw that he was crying.

"Chuck?" he asked, puzzled. A sob heaved through Chuck and he scrambled out from between Raleigh and the refrigerator, pulling his pants up from around his knees and rushing out of the kitchen. Raleigh rocked back on his heels, unable to process the sudden turn of events. He could feel, suddenly, that he might be on the way to a serious drug-induced event -- it was that tingling that seemed to rise up from the base of his skull and move through his jaw and up to his eyeballs. It was always a bad sign, like some kind of shell was forming around his brain and cutting him off from himself.

He didn't know how long he'd sat there, fighting the urge to vomit, before Newt found him. He'd never, never, seen Newt so angry. His glasses were crooked and his hair was pressed to one side from the way he'd slept. Raleigh tried to smile at him but it must not have worked because Newt reached out and levered him to his feet.

"God damn it, Raleigh. You colossal fucking fuck up. Why is it always fuck first, think later with you junkies? JESUS. We're in the middle of a world fucking crisis right now. I just needed you to be an adult for one fucking week -- you know what? I can't deal with you like this anymore. Not even for Mako. And put your dick away!"

"Is this about Chuck?" Raleigh asked, as he fumbled himself back into his pants.

“He tried to kill himself, Raleigh. He just found out he died and was rebuilt by like, his legitimate arch-nemesis. He doesn't need you to suck his dick, man. He needs… I don’t know, something else. Help.”

“I’m sorry,” Raleigh said.

Newt stared at him for a moment and his face was distant, like a stranger’s face. Raleigh felt like a carton of milk that had expired.

“It was an accident,” he offered.

"You've got come on your face," was all Newt said in reply as he half-carried Raleigh down the hall. Raleigh wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and it came back smeared with blood. He touched the place where Chuck had bitten him and it felt good, so he pushed on it again, sucking at the fresh blood that welled up.

"Stop that," Newt said, knocking Raleigh's hand away from his face and pushing him into the bathroom. He flipped on the lights and Raleigh winced under their intensity.

"Can you shower by yourself or do you need me to stay?" Newt asked. Raleigh shook his arms off and sank to the floor, resting his head against the rim of the toilet.

"Gonna be sick," he managed around the saliva flooding his mouth. He spit into the toilet and groaned. He felt Newt reach behind his ear and begin extracting the pins there. A moment later he felt a cool, damp cloth pressed to the back of his neck.

"Here's a glass of water," Newt said quietly from behind him. Raleigh heard Newt set the glass somewhere near him and walk to the door.

"Raleigh... I don't want to have to tell her you’re dead." The door clicked closed behind Newt and Raleigh gave himself up to the roiling in his stomach and the creeping fuzz in his head.

 

* * *

 

In the hall, Newt rubbed his eyes behind his glasses and sighed. He'd needed more sleep, more time to process what he'd been seeing in Chuck's mind, more information. He'd recognized those lights; felt them when he'd Drifted with the Kaiju brains, dreamed about them uncountable nights since. They had been in the Drift with him, then, a kind of net of stars that wound through and around the Kaiju consciousness. The same way they wound through and around Chuck's. But he couldn't think about that now. There were junkies in the living room and Raleigh might be OD'ing in the bathroom.

"All right, people," he said, walking into the living room. "Party's over. God, that's so, I can't believe I even just said that. Whatever. Get your shit and get out, guys."

He flipped off the Drift set and began pulling a Pons off the nearest prone form. The door to the balcony opened and Leese came in, smelling of smoke.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Newt asked, dropping the Pons on the coffee table. "Leese. Come on."

"Hey, boss," she said, grinning. "Need some help?"

She was considerably more adept at rousing the party guests and in a few minutes they were all in varying stages of consciousness.

"I'd say 'thank you', but this whole thing is your fault, isn't it?" Newt asked.

"You wound me," Leese said, grabbing a queasy-looking man by the arm and steering him toward the bathroom. She stopped suddenly in the entrance to the hall, then spun around, wrenching the man with her. The man sank to his knees and vomited noisily onto the rug but she ignored him.

"Newt?" she asked, uncertainly.

Behind her he saw Chuck, barely upright, in the entrance to his room. His face was twisted in a rictus of pain and even as Newt moved toward him, Chuck seized and fell back on the floor. He began to jerk, head banging hard onto the wood of the floor. Newt slid to his knees and pulled Chuck's head into his lap. Leese was next to him, helping him to roll Chuck onto his side.

An alarm went off throughout the apartment. The wall screens in every room flashed with a priority call code. Leese pulled her vest off and folded it, slipping it under Chuck's head and pushing Newt away.

"Go," she said. "I've got this."

"There's clonazepam in the dining room," Newt said as he leapt up and ran back to the living room. The number on the screen was Mako's.

"Mako? Something's wrong with Chuck," Newt said immediately upon answering, ignoring the five people still moving aimlessly around the living room.

"It's Kaiju, Newt." Mako sounded exhausted and had made the call without video. "Signature everywhere, but no sightings. Where's Raleigh?"

"He's out." Newt prayed she wouldn't ask him anything else. She was silent for a long moment.

"I see. I was hoping Chuck might have something to tell us."

"I don't know, Mako. He started seizing right before you called...he needs to rest--"

"I've done enough resting," Chuck said hoarsely from behind him. Newt turned to see him leaning heavily on the back of the couch.

"Let me help, Mako. I can find them." Chuck was swaying on his feet and his words were slurred.

"How is that, Chuck?" Mako said after a moment.

"Long story," Newt interjected. "But he’s probably right. Do you want us at the Shatterdome?" He went to Chuck and felt for the pulse in his wrist. Elevated. He heard the soft click that meant Mako had muted herself.

"You can't go anywhere," he hissed at Chuck. "That seizure medication is going to knock you out soon, man."

"Then give me something else," Chuck said from between clenched teeth.

"Get to the docks," Mako said, rejoining them. "I'll have someone meet you."

The call cut out and Newt pushed his glasses up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"All right," he said. He felt like he was a thousand years old. He clapped his hands. "All right. Leese, get these people out of here. Also, do you have any uppers?"

She went to her bag, draped over a chair, and pulled out a weekly pill organizer and tossed it to him.

"Wednesday is uppers," she said. "Is it safe for them to go out if, you know... Kaiju?"

"Probably not," Newt said, popping the container labeled "W" open and digging two of the little blue pills out with his forefinger. "Nowhere's safe, Leese."

"Here," he said, handing the pills to Chuck. "We'll take the flitter. And put on something with long sleeves. I don't want to have to explain your arms to Mako."

Chuck disappeared to change and Leese began herding the oblivious drug addicts out. The door closed behind the last of them as Chuck returned and Newt led the way to the roof access.

"Oh, yeah," he said, turning back to Leese. "Raleigh may or may not have OD'd in the bathroom. Can you--?" He made a hand motion that Leese had long understood to mean "handle it" and she nodded, resigned.

"Sure. Also, I mean, what the fuck is going on, man?"

Newt grinned at her, eyes alight with a bit of his old manic energy, despite his exhaustion.

"It's crazy," he said. "It's so fucking crazy, and I can't wait to tell you. Please don't let Raleigh die." He pushed Chuck ahead of him through the door, waved at her, and then he was gone and she was alone in the apartment.

"Right," she said. "Let's go see what Mr. Becket's up to, shall we?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited again on 3/23/15, just the end. I shamelessly switched POVs in the same section. I know. I'm aware. I did it on purpose, because it was expedient. I'm sorry.  
> Edited 3/16/15 additional plot elements.
> 
> I won't insult any of us by apologizing for the like... 8 month hiatus. I will only say thank you to everyone who stuck with me, thank you to all the people who took a chance on a WIP, thank you to all the people who left kudos and who commented! I had some great artistic opportunities in those months I was away, and had two short plays of mine produced (woo!) and I finished my program. I think I grew a lot as a writer, and I hope that it will start to show in this piece. I won't promise to never leave you hanging for a while, but I do promise that I will finish this story. Come hell or high water, as my mother used to say, I will finish this story!
> 
> It's a little short, but I wanted to post something as soon as I got to a stopping place. It's unbeta'd. All mistakes are mine. Please enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Chuck was not okay. He knew it when he told Newt he would help Mako find the kaiju. He knew it before that, when he felt himself start to seize. And before that when he saw Raleigh in the kitchen, getting his dick sucked by some girl. And that part in between... when Raleigh's fingers had been digging into his hips and his lips had been wrapped around Chuck's sudden erection and the shit coming out of his mouth, God, it was too much, and then he'd swallowed Chuck's come like a penitent receiving grace and Chuck had looked into Raleigh's glassy, blown eyes and realized that neither of them was okay.

He scratched absently at the bandages on his arms, caught himself, and tugged his sleeves down to his wrists. The white gauze was an unwelcome reminder of what he'd seen in the Drift. As if he needed another reminder. As if the weird subdermal thrumming, the awareness pressing up against him from the inside, the knowledge of his own death and memories of his resurrection-- as if none of that was enough. There was a low roll of thunder, a streak of heat lightning across the sky. He wondered what would happen if he threw himself off the balcony.

Then Newt was there, leading him to the flitter, and they were up, looking down at the island and Chuck realized Raleigh's apartment was on the side of a mountain or a hill. He looked out across the water and could just make out the lights of the Shatterdome.

"Are we on Hong Kong Island?" he asked, the words an effort through the cacophony in his head. His father had flown one of his early drops here, when he was still with Lucky Seven. Stopped the kaiju in Victoria Harbour but decimated Hong Kong Island in the process.

"Yeah," Newt said, attention on the controls. "They built a lot of high end residential stuff out here after the Breach closed. Rich people wanted to prove they weren't afraid to come back to the ocean. And there wasn't anything left here, really."

Chuck pressed his face against the cool plexiglass of the window and let the scenery speed by without notice. He could see a wave of tiny lights in his mind's eye and each one of them was calling his name. He tried to focus on grounding himself in his body, the way he did when he was piloting, but his mind was working against him, propelling him toward the lights when he tried to move away. There was another crack of lightning and almost immediately a rumble of thunder. The silence in the cabin was stifling.

"So, Raleigh," he began.

"Oh, God, man, I am so sorry," Newt said. "We thought he'd kinda straightened up lately, you know, more or less. Obviously less. Anyway, we weren't worried about him ODing or anything anymore."

"Is that--" Chuck started again.

"But that's what they do, man, pinheads, they don't think, they just, it's like chasing the RABIT, you know? And Raleigh, well, he's just kind of... sexual, you know? I don't think he meant anything by... you know. Sucking you off."

"Yeah," Chuck said, thinking about the slurring words of worship as Raleigh kissed him and the gentle, awestruck caresses.

"Yeah, or maybe he did. He was really fucked up though, man, so don't... I mean. He didn't like, assault you, did he? Because I'll kill him if you want. Or, I won't, because he's much bigger than me. But. I'll talk to him really sternly."

"No," Chuck said, eyeing the lights in his head as they tried to sneak closer. "Thanks, mate, for the concern. But Raleigh Becket would have a hard time getting his hands on my dick if I didn't want them there."

"Well, maybe emotionally assaulted you--"

"Newt." Between the lights and the rising pitch of the thrum under his skin, Chuck could barely breathe.

"Right, yeah. Case closed," Newt said, glancing at him. "Are you okay, man?"

"No," Chuck said from between gritted teeth. "Get me there. Now."

Chuck had no recollection of the rest of the journey and by the time they landed he had to be lifted out of the flitter. He had impressions of unfamiliar, worried faces peering down at him, then air rushing across his face and the sensation of rising quickly. Then a woman in a drivesuit was closing his hand around the rung of a ladder and saying, "Climb."

He climbed forever, and each rung was sharp in his hand like glass, and below him and behind him were the lights, like a tide coming in, implacable and inescapable. And after them was something worse. Someone was holding him down, asking him questions. He heard Mako's voice, something something something, where, Chuck, where is it, but he was belted down and the wave of lights crested over him in tendrils and punched through him and he was swallowed up.

He drowned.

When he opened his eyes, he was belted into a jumpseat in the conn pod of a Jaeger. Mako's face was huge on a display screen before him. From the clock in the corner of the display he knew that only 30 minutes had passed since he left Raleigh's apartment. He took in the various readings and gauges projected on the screen in front of the pilots. Kaiju signature, all around them, everywhere.

"He's no good to us," Mako was saying to someone offscreen. "You have to give me something--"

"Mako." His voice was hoarse, and he thought he might have been screaming. He could feel the lines of light rising again, thundering toward him, his bones rattling as they came. Outside, he knew, it had started to rain.

"It's time."

Alarms began to blare as the second wave took Chuck down. When he came up again, gasping, he could feel the jaeger moving, could see it sprinting through the harbour back toward Kowloon. Mako was shouting at someone and Chuck knew that three kaiju had erupted from beneath the city, from nowhere.

A small comm window opened on the display, showing a frantic pilot. "Nothing! They break apart and just reform! General, we can't touch them! Fire plasma cannon!" His screen went out abruptly and one of the blips on the grid vanished.

Another wave and he knew he couldn't make it back. This one took him too far down, down, down, where the Something Worse was waiting, would he never stop drowning, his father had told him, sink or swim, kiddo, and he swam and swam and swam, but Raleigh was beside him saying sink, sink, sink with me and he went down, down, down, until he lay in the soft mud at the bottom of the harbour and when he rolled over he was looking into the eye of a limbless kaiju, like a monstrous globular cell buried here and it looked back at him and it was saying in the voice of the Something, sink, sink, sink, down, down, down and they all had to do what it said, kill, tear, rend and snap, they all had to do what it said and he had to do what it said, too, because--

He heard someone screaming, "Down, down, down," and he thought it was himself but it was the women piloting the jaeger and they were boring into the harbour floor.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, it's here. It's here." And on the view screen, suddenly, revealed in a swirl of mud and trash, a giant eye. Sink, sink, sink, it was saying, and he had to do what it said, too, because-- One of the women shouted something and Chuck felt the thumping of pistons engaging deep within the jaeger, then a shudder as they lurched forward.

"Direct hit!" one of the pilots shouted. Chuck felt a snap of cold rage, and then a sudden absence, then the mass of lights swelled and speared him, carrying him down with a hiss of sinksinksink and he sank, and he thought this was not what Chuck Hansen would do.

But then.

But then, he was not Chuck Hansen, was he?

 

* * *

 

Raleigh had a dream. It was part memory, part warning. It had come to him once before, the night before Pentecost had flown back into his life and plucked him off the wall.

It went like this:

He was in Gipsy's conn pod and Yancy was beside him. But in the way of dreams, they were also side by side on the third story deck of their childhood home. This was the first house their parents had bought, just after Jasmine was born, before Dad got the promotion and they moved to the nicer part of Anchorage. Nicer, but further from the water. Raleigh could see out across the frozen expanse of Knik Arm, so he knew it was winter, but he wasn't cold.

He turned toward Yancy on the porch. He turned toward Yancy in the conn pod. He felt safe. He felt happy. But Yancy was shaking his head, looking down and saying something that Raleigh couldn't hear.

"What?" he asked, smiling. "What did you say?"

But Yancy was looking at him now and his face was grim, his eyes were accusing, like they'd never been in life. His mouth moved again, shaping words, but Raleigh heard nothing. He was sad now, too, and he felt guilty, but he didn't know why.

"I'm sorry, Yance. Don't be mad." Raleigh could see himself from the outside and he was four years old and he couldn't bear to let his big brother down. He reached out a hand.

And Yancy was jerked away. Ripped out of the conn pod, ripped off the deck into the sky. Raleigh’s left arm was gone, too, and all around him was a whirlwind of kaiju blue, dragging him deep into Driftspace, and Yance was screaming, and Raleigh couldn't see, couldn't find him, and they were far apart, and then a tearing, like roots ripped from the earth, and it was silent, there was nothing.

The first time he dreamed the dream, Raleigh woke himself up screaming. And then he followed Pentecost on his mad plan and saved the world.

The second time he dreamed the dream, Yancy's face was Chuck's face, and the terrible creature from the Drift was with them, always, and he woke up suddenly and silently. His head was pounding and his throat was raw as he levered himself upright and staggered out of bed. As he was vomiting into the bedside trashcan, he had a sudden, visceral memory of his fingers digging into hip bones while his throat worked to swallow spurts of hot come.

"Oh, fuck," he panted, resting his head on his arms. Chuck pushing him away, the shadows in the kitchen slipping over his skin like water. "Oh, fuck, fuck. Jesus, fuck." He stumbled to the bathroom and rinsed his mouth, spitting blood into the sink when he reopened a wound on his lip. That had been Chuck, too, he remembered, enthusiastic, he was fairly sure. At least he was probably only guilty of poor judgement, and not assault. He followed the sound of the television out into the living room.

He found Leese on the couch, watching live coverage of a kaiju battle.

"Where's Chuck?" he rasped. Leese jumped and whirled around.

"Jesus, man! I mean, I'm glad you're alive but shit."

"Where's Chuck?" Raleigh repeated.

"Newt took him," she said.

"Where?" Raleigh asked.

Leese jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the battle playing out on the wall screen behind her.

"There."

Raleigh collapsed into a chair and put his head in his hands.

"Jesus," he whispered. "What happened?"

"You want the part where the kaiju attacked or the part where you were giving a blow job to an epileptic in the kitchen?" Leese asked. Raleigh raised his head to glare at her. "Hey," she said sympathetically. "Hey, it's not as bad as it looks. I mean, yes, it's actually really terrible, we lost a bunch of jaegers. But the fight's almost over."

And it was. They watched together as a jaeger emerged from the bay, dragging what looked like a giant jellyfish out of the water and onto the docks. Footage of two full squads of jaegers carrying enormous flame throwers, setting what looked like empty ocean aflame. Helicopters and transports streamed out from the Shatterdome. Then, more tentatively, the civilian salvage and scavenge boats. Soon, the news reports were showing replays of the fight and reporting live from the areas hit hardest by the attack. Raleigh and Leese both shot furtive glances at the time display.

Raleigh's cell vibrated on the table and he snatched it up. It was Vera.

"Fuck," he said, taking the call. "Hey, Vera. Are they calling a session?"

"Yes," she said, and her voice was shaky. "God, Raleigh, they took out the high rise right next to mine. I thought I was going to die."

"Are you okay?" Raleigh got up and made his way to the kitchen, scooping up a couple of glasses and dropping them in the sink.

"Yeah. Yes." She huffed out a breath and he could almost hear her pull herself together. "They'll be in session as soon as there's a quorum. There's kaiju blue in a lot of the streets, so transport is a problem. None of the car services are running, but the senior staff is calling in favors to arrange flitters."

"You can bet your ass we won't be on the list for one of those," Raleigh said. He rummaged in the fridge and pulled out a carton of orange juice, unscrewing the cap and drinking straight from the carton.

"I've got a friend," Vera said, just as Raleigh's wallscreen flashed an incoming priority call from Mako.

"Answer it?" Leese called from the couch.

"Yes!" Raleigh said, tossing the carton of juice into the sink. He dodged around the kitchen island toward the living room, and then, into the phone, "Hold on, Vee, hold on."

Then he saw Mako's face, tired and wan, and he said, "I'll call you back," and hung up. He and Mako stared at each other, neither speaking, and he noticed a stain on her blouse, the way her hair was coming down at the nape, how their breathing was syncing, like it used to when they piloted.

"What happened," he said at last. Mako's mouth pulled in tight and for a moment he thought she was on the verge of tears. She closed her eyes and shook her head.

"I'm so tired," she whispered. Raleigh remembered the little girl, hiding from the monster in an alley, eyes squeezed tight and hands over her ears.

“Mako,” he said, clamping down on a spike of terror, “Mako, talk to me. What happened. Where’s Chuck?”

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and drew in several shaky breaths. At last she clasped her hands together and said, “You have to come, Raleigh. However you can.” Then she ended the call.

Leese stared at the blank screen for long moment, then fished a cigarette out of her pocket.

“You fucking people,” she said, lighting it. Raleigh was already half way down the hall, phone to his ear.

“I thought I told you not to smoke in here,” he said over his shoulder. The call connected and he spoke over Vera’s greeting. “Vera, call your friend. How soon can you get someone here?”

“He’s already on the way. I’ll meet you downtown.”

“No,” Raleigh said, struggling into a pair of jeans, one-handed. “I need to get to the Shatterdome.” 

By the time Raleigh was dressed, he could hear the flitter outside. Leese was perched on a chair in the dining room, cigarette dangling between her lips, tabbing through Newt's notes and loading a Drift tape into the deck. Raleigh snatched the cigarette from her mouth and dropped it in a beer bottle.

"You're an ass," she said, not looking up. "Are these readings from Chuck Hansen? I mean, what the fuck is this, have you looked at this?"

"I don't know, it's Newt's stuff. Look, you can stay here until they clear the streets. Don't touch anything. Don't steal anything."

Leese ignored him, fingers flying over the keys of the Drift deck, absorbed. As soon as the door closed behind him, she tapped out another cigarette and lit it.

"Fuck you, Raleigh Becket," she said, inhaling. "Now, let's see what the fuck we've got here."  She slipped the Pons over her head, called up the command to initiate, and punched into the Drift.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wellll, okay, this is the first chapter to be completely rewritten. I deleted two chapters (previously 9 and 10) and wrote this chapter, which serves the purpose of both those in half the time and hopefully with twice the skill. If you've been following along as I post then 1) bless you, you poor soul, and 2) you might want to re-read at least the last few chapters, as I've been undertaking a massive edit over the past week or so. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck with me even as this fic seemed to languish in WIP hell. I read every one of your comments, even if it takes me half a year to respond, and they are all that carry me through the dark days/weeks/months of writer's block. Please let me know what you think of the revisions, if you're a long time reader, or what you think in general if this is your first time through.
> 
> Also, I'm trying to make more use of my [tumblr](http://beachpartybb.tumblr.com), instead of just lurking like a lurking lurker who lurks. I've been toying with the idea of taking prompt requests just to give myself little daily writing projects while I'm languishing at work... more on that to come.
> 
> Now, our story continues...

Chuck was dead and the blue lights drowned him. He opened his eyes. He was tied down and the blue lights blinded him. He tried to scream, but the light rushed in and down his throat, and he tried to swallow around it and he choked and the air was screaming, a warning, he had to, he had to do something --

“Chuck! Chuck, come on man, come on-- get the fucking tube out, come on!” Newt’s face was above him and he was shouting at someone and then the lights were gone from his throat and he sucked in a breath and coughed it back out and he was in med bay, on a gurney, machines beeping and people shouting, and every part of him hurt.

He blinked and now he was in a room, and it was dark and quiet and Mako was sitting beside his bed, watching him. He swallowed and coughed and she held a cup with a straw for him to drink from. She laid her hand over the top of his, mindful of the IV. He wanted to tell her thank you, that she looked like her mother had in pictures, to ask about her swollen belly. But he was so tired, and those were questions Chuck Hansen might have asked. And he was not Chuck Hansen.

“Aren’t you?” Mako asked, tucking her thumb against his palm. He shook his head slightly.

“Then who are you?”

Chuck thought about the red-dark and the Something that moved through it and commanded him, about going into nothing and coming back out of it. He swallowed twice to wet his throat and then whispered, “A ghost.”

“Whoever you are, you saved a lot of people tonight.” She smiled at him softly, brushing his hair back from his forehead. “We might have lost the city without you.”

Later, or in his dream, she whispered, “It’s okay to have lived, Chuck,” and kissed him on the forehead. But he hadn’t lived, he and Raleigh saw it, he hadn’t lived, he’d been brought back. “It’s okay to have lived,” she said, but Mako was a girl again, and she held him close to her thin body and his shoulders shook with his sobs, because his mother was dead and he was not, and nothing he ever did would be enough to fix it. Mako kissed him on the forehead. “It’s okay to be alive.”

“He’s alive,” Mako was saying. He could feel her hand on his, thumb stroking his palm. “It was a grand mal seizure.”

“What’s wrong?” It was Raleigh’s voice, rough and smooth at the same time, a voice for cursing and for praying, it tasted like whiskey -- was this now? was it before? -- and now he was closer and he asked again, “What’s wrong with him?”

“They are inside his mind,” Mako said. “The ones who sent the kaiju. He is fighting them. And it is killing him.”

Their voices carried on around him, but Chuck looked into the deep back of his mind and saw the severed ends of light, twitching toward him out of the red darkness. Something was hemorrhaging out of him and being swallowed up by the darkness. When it was all gone, he would be, too. He knew it and he watched as it trickled past. Soon, the dam would burst and it would flood away and it would be over. Somewhere past where he could see, the creature who was not mother waited but did not approach.

“I’m losing my mind,” Raleigh whispered to him. _Me, too_ , Chuck thought, and Mako said, “There has always been something between you.”

“But what?” Raleigh asked and Chuck thought, and Chuck is sixteen, an angry boy on the verge of becoming an angry young man, pushing through a throng of crewmen into the locker room, where is his father? no one will tell him anything, and there are the pilots, his dad sits on a bench, Drivesuit unzipped to the waist, but standing beside him, golden and shining, like the saints and martyrs he learned about in Sunday school, and there’s a feeling in his chest, he can’t speak--

“Raleigh.”

Chuck opened his eyes and Raleigh was next to him, his gold dulled and his shine dimmed.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Raleigh said, pushing a straw between Chuck’s lips. Chuck sipped at the tepid water and enjoyed the wet slide of it down his throat. “He’s awake,” Raleigh called softly.

Mako and Newt clustered around him. Newt was reading something from a clipboard. Mako took his hand again and this time he flexed his fingers against hers.

“What’s my diagnosis?” Chuck asked, his voice cracking and hoarse. He took another pull from the straw. “Let me guess. It’s terminal.”

“Don’t,” Mako said, shaking her head.

“It’s not good, man,” Newt said. “They’re in there, deep, and they’re not letting go easy. Last night, you had three seizures during the fight.”

“The Rangers with you said every time you fought back into yourself, to tell them something, after that, you would have another,” Mako said. “And when they killed the kaiju brain, the one you found for them under the water, they thought it killed you, too.”

“Right,” Newt said. “So, I figure it’s like an immune system. Except you’re the virus. And the more you try to dig out and break off the kaiju connection, the more violent the reaction.”

“I’m an intruder in my own mind,” Chuck said at last. “Even my body knows I’m not supposed to be here.”

No one said anything. Mako squeezed his hand so tightly he could feel the bones grate together. Raleigh turned and began to pace the length of the room.

“Well,” Newt said. “Well. Uh. I can stop it. I think. I’m pretty sure. It’s like… cauterizing the wound. We can sever the connection, right? Snap each little piece and burn it closed.”

“Then do it!” Raleigh said. “Why are we talking about it? Do it!”

Newt was looking at Mako and Mako was looking at the floor, a slight frown on her face.

“Because,” Chuck said slowly, piecing it together as he spoke. “If you cut them off, if they can’t get at me, I can’t get at them, either. Right? I won’t be able to see.”

“So?” Raleigh asked, incredulous.

“He turned the battle for us last night,” Mako said. Raleigh went very still. He stared at her.

“I don’t believe you,” he said at last.

“He saved a lot of people, Raleigh, the whole city! He’s a valuable--”

“And what happens to him, huh? What happens the next time and the next time? More seizures?” Raleigh’s jaw was clenched and his hands were fisted.

“The connection will get stronger every time they attack. His… Chuck’s mind will start to, to degrade. To break apart, until it’s just them. The… hive mind, or whatever, that’s all that will be left.” Newt tucked the clipboard under his arm and cleared his throat. “I think. Again. I’m pretty sure.”

Chuck could feel the slow leakage of himself, ebbing out into the red dark, and the Something that waited to take its place. He thought of the endless lines of light, pulling him down, drowning him, flaying his flesh from his bones and layering it back on, he thought of going out into the Drift, existing for an endless moment only there and nowhere else, and then dissipating into nothingness.

“You don’t have to decide anything right now,” Mako said. “You should rest.”  She pushed Newt gently out of the room before her and turned to look at Raleigh, where he stood immobile at the foot of Chuck’s bed.

“Raleigh?” she asked softly. Raleigh stared at his feet and after a moment she went away and closed the door behind her. Then Raleigh spoke without looking at him.

“You don’t have to keep doing this.”

“Doing what?” Chuck asked.

“Sacrificing yourself,” Raleigh replied.

“Would you do it different?” Chuck watched the play of emotion over Raleigh’s face, always so close to the surface, never as good at concealment as he thought he was.

“Yes,” Raleigh said, stubborn.

“Liar,” Chuck said. Raleigh looked at him, then, and his eyes were raw, like a wound in his face, painful and deep, and _wanting_ , frightening in its intensity, the _need_.

“In the kitchen,” Chuck said, mouth suddenly dry. “Why--”

“I was high,” Raleigh said unconvincingly, moving closer. “I shouldn’t have done it. It was a mistake.” He was looming over Chuck, the light behind him, leaving his face in shadow. Chuck felt his breath catch, felt a stab of arousal low in his belly. He looked up at the gleam of Raleigh’s eyes and twitched his lips in the tiniest of smiles.

“Liar,” he said again, and then Raleigh’s mouth was on his, their teeth clicking together, Raleigh’s hands on his face, in his hair. Chuck slid his tongue against Raleigh’s teeth and then past them, and Raleigh made a muffled sound. He forced an arm under Chuck’s back and pulled him up so he could bite down Chuck’s neck, over his collar. Chuck jerked at the feel of Raleigh’s teeth against bone. He brought his hands up to press against Raleigh’s chest and hissed as the IV ripped loose from his hand.

“Fuck, ow, God,” he said, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. He struggled for a moment with the tubing, flailing at it until he could shove it off the bed.

“I hope that wasn’t important,” he said, breathless, fisting his hands in Raleigh’s shirt and pulling him down.

“Biohazard,” Raleigh murmured, crawling further onto the narrow bed. Chuck surged up against him, biting Raleigh’s lower lip and then sucking it into his mouth, releasing it with a soft, wet sound. “Think of the bodily fluids.”

“I am,” Chuck said, kicking the sheets off his legs. He tried to lever himself up, but his arms gave out and he fell back against the pillows.

“Here,” Raleigh said, and he pushed a button, raising the head of the bed, and Chuck with it, until he was a little more upright. Then Chuck was tugging him over and Raleigh was straddling his thighs, rucking his flimsy hospital gown up around his waist. Raleigh fastened his mouth over Chuck’s collarbone, sucking hard, and it went straight to Chuck’s dick.

“Fuck, Raleigh,” Chuck gasped, head thumping back. Raleigh pushed his palm against Chuck’s growing erection, pressing it back against Chuck’s belly. Chuck whimpered and arched into Raleigh's hand, his cock stiffening faster than it had since he was a teenager. Raleigh chuckled a little and Chuck felt his cheeks flush. He scrabbled at the button of Raleigh’s jeans and Raleigh pushed his hands away.

“You don’t have to,” Raleigh said, pulling back, eyes glassy. Chuck raised an eyebrow and deliberately forced the button open. “I don’t need… this isn’t about that.”

“A wise man once told me, stop being so fucking self-sacrificing,” Chuck said, pressing meaningfully against Raleigh, half hard already, through his jeans.

“You’re such a little shit,” Raleigh growled, but he stood up and unfastened his jeans, kicking them and his briefs off and scrambling back onto the bed. He fisted Chuck’s cock loosely in his hand, leaning over him to lick back into his mouth. Raleigh rubbed his cock to hardness against Chuck's thigh, fucking his tongue into Chuck's mouth and pulling long, teasing strokes against Chuck's dick. It wasn’t enough, Chuck needed something else, just a little more -- he grabbed for Raleigh’s hips, wanting something to rub against, more friction, anything, just more -- and Raleigh pulled away.

“Raleigh,” Chuck said, panting. “I swear to God, mate. I swear to _God_ , I will fucking kill you.”

Raleigh grinned wickedly, and for a moment he was the golden idol of Chuck’s youthful fantasies, so alive, so beautiful, it left Chuck breathless. And then Raleigh pushed Chuck’s knees apart and licked a long stripe down his cock and between his balls and back up, suckling the head lightly on his way.

“You've done this before,” Chuck said. Raleigh _hmm_ ed and pushed one of Chuck's knees up to his chest. “What are you--” Chuck began, and then, “Oh, fffffuck me,” as Raleigh pressed his tongue against Chuck’s asshole.

“Fuck you? You’re in the med bay,” Raleigh said. “What kind of a man do you think I am?” And then he buried his face between Chuck’s legs, laving his hole with broad swipes of his tongue, circling around and over, then flicking against it with the tip of his tongue. Chuck heard himself making little mewling noises as Raleigh nibbled gently at the puckered flesh, teeth catching against the muscle and shooting little bursts of pleasure on a mainline to his dick. Then Raleigh’s tongue was back, licking into him with firmer strokes, and Chuck felt Raleigh’s thumb pressing against the bottom of his hole, pulling him open, just enough for Raleigh’s tongue to lick inside.

“Jeee-sus,” Chuck said, wrapping a hand around his dick and stroking it in time to the insistent little thrusts of Raleigh’s tongue. “Aw, fuck, Raleigh, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna--”

Raleigh pulled his tongue free with an obscene _pop_! and stuck his index finger in his mouth, coating it with spit. Then he pressed the blunt tip to Chuck’s wet entrance and worked it inside.

"You're so fucking tight," he rasped, watching his finger disappear into Chuck's body. Raleigh wrapped his other hand around his own neglected erection and began to thrust his hips up into his hand and his finger into Chuck at the same time.

“Has anyone… ever fucked you…” Raleigh asked, panting, finger probing up and in, “...before?” Chuck shook his head frantically, trying to focus on too much at once, Raleigh’s blown eyes, the way the muscles in his arm jerked and twitched as he fucked his finger inside Chuck’s ass, the purple head of his cock as it passed through his fingers -- and then Raleigh pressed against something inside him and Chuck felt his muscles clench involuntarily.

“Fuck,” he grunted, as the spasm passed. “No, God, no one. Please, Raleigh. _Please_. Oh, _fuck_.” Raleigh pressed against the spot again and Chuck pumped his hand against his dick, spewing a litany of curses as Raleigh worked him from the inside out.

“Almost, almost,” he panted, and he heard Raleigh spit, felt another finger slide inside, wetter and slicker, and blunt against his prostate and he tightened his fist around his cock, stripping his hand up and down, until he felt his balls pull up and tighten, and his orgasm ripped through him. He felt himself clench around Raleigh’s fingers, felt his come spurting hot over his hand and against his belly. And a moment later Raleigh cried out and stiffened, and came against Chuck’s thigh. He slumped forward, head against Chuck's belly, and they lay together for a moment, panting.

After a while, Raleigh sat up, tugging Chuck’s hospital gown off him and using it to mop up the worst of their mess. He balled up the gown and tossed it in the trash bin. Raleigh settled down on his side, facing Chuck, scrunched together on the too small bed, and pulled the thin hospital blankets over them. He had a soft smile on his face as he watched Chuck fading into sleep.

“What?” Chuck asked, uncomfortable with the thing he saw in Raleigh’s face, too much like tenderness, or devotion, or some other thing he wasn’t sure he’d earned.

“Nothing,” Raleigh said, his grin widening. “I just had sex with Chuck Hansen.”

Chuck waited for the denial to rise up inside of himself, for the whispers in the red dark that told him _nonono not Chuck, not you_ , he waited and he waited, but there was nothing but a post-coital warmth and a fucked out peace.

“Yeah,” he said at last. Then he smirked, and it felt good and familiar on his face. “You’re welcome.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Raleigh said, rolling his eyes. He fumbled for the bedside controls and lowered the bed flat, throwing a leg over Chuck’s hips, an arm around his waist, pulling him tight. Chuck lay still for a long time, listening to Raleigh's breathing smooth out and deepen. And then, for the first time since he’d come out of the water, Chuck drifted off to sleep, unaided.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter! And for stopping just before the action... 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for all the kind words, comments, and encouragement! Please let me know what you think!

Chuck plays on the rug and Mother sits on the couch. On the coffee table before her is an old-fashioned skeleton key, and Chuck must never touch it.

"It's not a key," Mother says, but she’s not talking to him, she doesn’t see him, and there's a rustling and a clicking and she's not really Mother. "It's a door," she says. "It's every door.”

And he watches from the corner of his eye as she takes the key and unlocks a space of empty air and steps through, disappears. His blocks and trucks are abandoned on the floor and he peers into the door that is not a door, opened by the key that is not a key. 

On the other side is red-dark madness and a thousand points of blue light. In the center of it all is not-Mother and in her not-hand she holds the not-key. And one by one, she gives each of the thousand lights its own key. A thousand keys, to make and open a thousand doors. Chuck is afraid; it’s very bad for the lights to have keys, very bad to open all of those doors.

Now, not-Mother is turning her head, slowly, slowly, he can feel her attention sliding toward him, like honey down the cabinets when he broke the jar. Chuck knows he must close the door somehow, before she looks at him, and his fingers scramble for the edges but there’s nothing, it’s only a slice in the air, and he’s only little.

“You need this,” she says, still turning, turning toward him, and she holds out the not-key, but she doesn’t know she’s offering it, she doesn’t see him. He reaches for it, stretches into the Other-space inside the door. As his fingers close around the ring of the key, not-Mother snaps around to him. Now she sees him. Now she is angry. Chuck tugs hard on the key and snatches it away. He tumbles backward into the living room.

Not-Mother is a dark, disjointed thing, following after him. A great howling and screeching comes from the snapping, clicking place that is her mouth, and Chuck knows that if she catches him, she will kill him. He finds the place that takes the key and turns it and the door begins to knit itself closed. Not-Mother thrusts a spiny leg through the narrowing gap and rakes a burning score down Chuck’s leg. The air around him is heavy with fury and confusion, she wants to know _why_ and _how_ and she wants _him_ , above everything else, she will have him --

\-- and the breach snaps closed, severing the hard, black leg. The living room is silent. Chuck looks at his own leg where it bleeds onto the rug, looks at the shiny spines on the severed limb, looks at the key, still clasped in his hand. He turns his head and--

He woke on the cramped hospital bed, Raleigh’s arm around his waist, Raleigh’s face pressed into the base of his neck. His leg was on fire and his hand was cramped into a claw around nothing. For a minute, the dream stayed upon him and he was in two places. Then meaning rushed in on him and he sat up, struggling out of Raleigh’s embrace. He massaged his hand loose and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. There was no wound to go with the fading pain in his leg.

Beside him, Raleigh stiffened as he came awake in an unfamiliar place.

“Chuck?” he asked, voice hoarse with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

“I saw her,” Chuck said quietly. “It was like, she didn’t know I was there, at first. And when she realized…” He shook his head, rubbing at the phantom wound on his leg. Raleigh pulled himself upright, suddenly alert.

“The… queen, or whatever,” Raleigh said. “From the Drift?” Chuck looked at him for a moment, nodded, eyes dark with fear and something else, like determination.

“I saw what they’re doing. She didn’t mean to, but she showed me. It’s not just the Hive, Raleigh. The, the connection, it’s with her. We both know it, now. And she showed me...” he trailed off, eyes unfocused.

Raleigh put a hand on Chuck’s arm and squeezed hard, shaking him a little.

“Hey. Chuck. What did she show you?”

“The Breach, it’s not the only one. I mean, they can open more now. There’s a key, or a door, something, some way of opening more. A thousand doors from their world to ours.” Chuck stood suddenly, almost vibrating with desperation. “They’re going to split us at the seams, Raleigh. They’re going to rip us apart.”

Raleigh climbed out of bed and began gathering his clothes from the floor.

“We have to tell Mako,” he said, pulling on his pants. “We’ve got to mobilize every unit and--”

“No,” Chuck said, absently. He was standing, naked, in the middle of the room, head cocked to the side in thought. “We can’t fight them here, Raleigh.”

“Go through the Breach? To their turf?” Raleigh asked. “Stop them from opening more breaches here?”

“No,” Chuck said again. He clapped his hands together and grinned. “No, we can’t. There’s too many of them. But she showed me, Raleigh. She didn’t know she was doing it.  I need pants, did they put pants somewhere?”

“Showed you what, Chuck?” Raleigh said as he shrugged into his shirt. “Here, check the dresser.”

“It’s a door!” Chuck said excitedly as he struggled into a pair of sweatpants. “And I know how to close it. We just have to get our hands on a key.”

"Yeah, just. Are you saying, what, go through and steal it from one of them?” Raleigh stared at Chuck, incredulous. “Do you even know what it’s like over there? It’s a… a wasteland, Chuck. Poison. And full of kaiju. Not one, or three, or even five at a time, but _hundreds_. Thousands, maybe. No, Mako’s not gonna send any of these kids into that.”

“I know,” Chuck said. He was smirking and he could feel the old bravado bubbling up under his skin. He raised an eyebrow in challenge and lifted his chin at Raleigh.

“What,” Raleigh said, frowning.

“We’ll do it,” Chuck said, grinning in earnest now. “I can find it. I can listen in, or whatever. That’s what Mako wanted me to do, anyhow, right? Provide intel?”

“Chuck,” Raleigh said. “I haven’t piloted a Jaeger in four years.”

“It’s like riding a bike,” Chuck said. “Besides, you’ve come off the bench before. And you did all right.”

“Mako will never let you near a Conn pod,” Raleigh said.

“Come on, _Rah_ -leigh,” Chuck scoffed. "As if that would stop me."

“You’re not suggesting we _steal a Jaeger_ , Chuck.” Raleigh said, shocked.

“Imagine if we could hand Mako a weapon, not just a piece of information, but a real game-changing weapon. Wouldn’t if be worth pissing her off? Worth anything? Come on,” Chuck wheedled. He came around the bed and grabbed Raleigh by the shoulder, as if he could transmit his excitement by touch. “We could save the world, Raleigh. Again.”

Raleigh scrubbed his hands over his eyes and shook his head as if to clear it.

“You’re determined to get yourself killed, huh?”

“We talked about this,” Chuck said, stubborn. “You’d do the same.”

“Yeah, you’re counting on it,” Raleigh muttered. He sighed heavily. Chuck thought he looked ancient, then, like a graven image of some pagan god. Like the world had exhausted him and then asked for more. But that’s what gods were for, Chuck thought. What they took up in worship they gave back out in service. Fighting kaiju, closing the Breach: this was their service.

Chuck brought his other hand up to frame Raleigh’s face and pulled him down for a kiss. It was nearly chaste, lips pressed to lips, the barest swipe of his tongue, and he pulled away.

“Please, Raleigh,” he said against Raleigh’s mouth. He felt the other man’s sigh. Raleigh brought a hand up to card through Chuck’s short hair. For a moment they just looked at each other. Chuck wondered if they would have come together if he had lived, or if they would have fallen apart like everyone else had in the past five years. Or if they would always have arrived at this point, in this room, at this decision.

"Ok," Raleigh said finally, resigned. "I'll do it." He turned without another word and let himself out of the room and Chuck hurried after.

* * *

 

They stole drive suits from the pilots' ready room and helped each other into them. Neither of them was sure how they would get a conn pod attached to a jaeger but luck was with them. One of the older models was strung up in the last bay in maintenance. They watched as the maintenance crew ran through a final series of checks, powered down the Jaeger, and headed two bays down.

“Let’s get auxiliary power up here and then get aboard,” Chuck said, crouching low behind the banks of maintenance control boards clustered before the Jaeger. He started the boot up sequence and began ticking through the pre-ignition checklist. “We can still initiate the neural handshake from the Conn, right?”

“Yeah,” Raleigh said, typing furiously at another terminal. “I’m just gonna close out this maintenance ticket, maybe it’ll give us a little time before they realize we’re gone. Go ahead and flip it to pilot override and let’s get the hell out of here.”

The maintenance sector was curved along the outer wall of the Shatterdome and giant struts protruded from the wall every two bays, blocking each small section from the view of the adjacent bays. Pilot gangways ran up the inside of the struts straight to the Conn pod and Chuck and Raleigh made it inside their Jaeger with no mishaps.

Raleigh sealed the hatch behind them and then climbed into the cradle and strapped himself in. Beside him, Chuck fumbled with the unfamiliar configuration of straps.

"They've made some upgrades," Raleigh said. "You need help?" Chuck shook his head stubbornly and snapped a calf guard in place.

"It's not rocket science," he said gruffly, adjusting his hips and pulling a support tight across his abdomen. Their biostats ticked online as Raleigh called up the screen for the handshake and Chuck breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. The blue and gold lights of the main display played over his face and he felt as though he’d never left the cockpit, as if death and dying and being resurrected were all a dream, and only this, piloting and fighting, were real. He looked at Raleigh, at the intentness that sharpened his features, brought him into focus. Chuck imagined for a moment that they’d done this a thousand times, that Raleigh was his co-pilot and all was as it should be. And even as he thought it, and was pleased, he realized that even in his fantasies he wasn’t at peace -- just fighting a different war.

“Are you ready?” Raleigh asked, smiling at him, anticipation written across his face. Chuck felt an answering smile on his lips, the familiar excitement bubbling up in his belly. He felt the prongs of the pons make contact with his head inside the helmet and saw his brain scans spill across the forward screen.

“Yeah,” he said, buoyant. “Oh, yeah.”

“Prepare for neural handshake in 3… 2… 1…” Raleigh finished the countdown and punched the ignition and they were in the Drift.

  
  
  



End file.
